Tor application gives error “Vidalia was unable to Tor”

Asked By Alice James 10 points N/A Posted on - 07/20/2011

I thought that our internet connection should be more secure, so I installed The Onion Router (Tor) which was some virtual tunnels that made the user anonymity. 

Users’ privacy and security could then be guaranteed. Web sites, instant messaging services, new sites could not track the users and the families when local internet providers would block them. Tor was initially working fine.

However, the error message appears.  The error message is as follows.

Vidalia was unable to Tor. Check your settings to ensure the

Correct name and location of your Tor executable is specified.

I have checked the settings and everything is where it is supposed to be.

The Tor message log is empty. My antivirus is set to allow Vidalia but then also this error occurs.

Please suggest me what to do now.

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Best Answer by Carl Jack

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Answered By Mark Spencer 0 points N/A #86015

Tor application gives error “Vidalia was unable to Tor”

Hi, an error message appears and it reads as follows.

ERROR MESSAGE

Vidalia was unable to start Tor. Check your settings to ensure the correct name and location of your Tor executable is specified

This error message appears because  Vidalia program cannot find the tor.exe file or this tor.exe file is not installed properly.

To solve the problem, try to follow these steps.

• Restart computer.
• Download the newest version of the TOR Browser Bundle. Then delete existing folders of 'Tor Browser'.
• Extract the Bundle and run the program.

If the file is improperly installed or damaged, then configure it.

The settings shall be configured as follows.

1. In Vidalia's Control Panel , select stop TOR.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select Network. Then it shall be in Network mode.
4. If any check box is clicked, un click them.
5. Ok. Then Close.

Hope this helps.

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• Posted on - 07/25/2011
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Answered By Carl Jack 10 points N/A #86016

Tor application gives error “Vidalia was unable to Tor”

Hello Alice,

You are getting that error because Tor is starting as a "system service". Check the following:

$ ls -l /etc/rc2.d/S20tor
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 23 2009 /etc/rc2.d/S20tor -> ../init.d/tor

When you are executing Vidalia, you need to make sure that tor runs under your user account. The error is occurring because Vidalia tries to start tor but can't, and that is because it's already running. So what you will need to do is to stop tor before running Vidalia:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/tor stop

In case you do not need to run tor at system start up,  you can go ahead and edit /etc/default/tor and set RUN_DAEMON to "no".

Regards,

Carl

 

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• Posted on - 09/09/2012
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