Comment 21 for bug 498141

Günther Radlherr wrote
> What can help difficult explanations, when the problem cannot be resolved?

Please keep in mind that a bug tracker is not a user support forum (the bug tracker is mainly a tool for developers to gather information about reported problems and track any progress in fixing it). The reported issue has been confirmed for current Inkscape versions (0.48.x) on Windows, seems to be triggered by certain color profiles installed on the affected systems (possibly in combination with certain locale settings), but has not yet been fixed.

As confirmed by several users there exists a workaround (to edit a certain value in Inkscape's preferences file):
1) quit any running Inkscape instances
2) make a backup copy of Inkscape's preferences file [1]
3) open 'preferences.xml' in a plain-text editor like Notepad
4) modify the group 'displayprofile' as described in earlier mentioned
   <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/608229/comments/9>
5) save the modified preferences file
6) start Inkscape again

A slightly different workaround involves installing Inkscape 0.47 temporarily:
 <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/623640/comments/17>

[1] usual location: '%APPDATA%\inkscape\preferences.xml'
    (you can enter this path including the variable directly into the address bar of the Explorer)