the IDE was working fine, then it fell over, now it randomly starts and tells me the target has changed. do i want to rebuild for the new target which is the one set for the project.

Then the next fun part run the build and it pops a "problem Occurred" popup!

Launching <program> has encountered a ...

Well i can say that after a few hrs and trying so man things that i've no clue how I got to this place
I have
1: imported the blink project
2: got the target set to the right chip
3: complied and downloaded in to chip
4: now got blinkon led :-)

So happy me, now I can go on to the hard bit of ...

Well removing the workspace and creating a new one.
Removing the IDF_PATH bit that I (Need for ESP8266 IDE) seems to have loaded the IDF in to the IDF manager

Now I'm getting

Configuring in: C:\Users\<username\espressif\workspace\spi_lcd_touch\managed_components\lvgl__lvgl\tests\build\default ...

Just to add some other information i think there is some issue with the fact that I have already installed the ESP2866 IDF about a year ago.
Looks like there may be some problems with each wanting the IDF_PATH to themselves.

your lucky to get that far, I can't add the IDF in to the IDE as it throws errors.
So your doing better than me mate.

Have now uninstalled the IDF and reinstalled it, to the same affect

when you start it says that there is an old and new path to the IDF. old is blank and new points to the idf?

Same error message encountered while trying to ass ESP-IDF

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Espressif ...