Fatal Error for Rcpp in Rstudio on windows machine

Question

I have R Studio(and R of course) and am aiming to use the Rcpp package.I am using a windows machine.

1. I installed R tools. The folder lies in C:\Rtool
2. I changed my PATH in control panel->system->advanced system settings->environment variables and added 2 new PATH s C:\Rtools\mingw_32\i686-w64-mingw32\bin and C:\Rtools\bin with each of those at the top of the list of PATHs
3. I restarted my computer
4. Started a new C++ script in rstudio
5. Loaded the rcpp package with library()
6. Ran the pre-existing code(timesTwo) by hitting the Source button in horizontal bar.

And I get an error message

The application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information

Also a pop-up alert comes out stating

R Session Aborted. R encountered a fatal error. The session was terminated.

By running library(rcpp) and sessionInfo() I get version information

R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21)
Platform: i386-w64-mingw32/i386 (32-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)
locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_Malaysia.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_Malaysia.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_Malaysia.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                     
[5] LC_TIME=English_Malaysia.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] Rcpp_0.12.6

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_3.3.1

Can anyone tell me what is wrong and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

Two issues:

1. You are using 32 bit version of R on a 64-bit OS
2. The path setup for Rtools is incorrect.

The path should have:

c:\Rtools\bin;
c:\Rtools\mingw_32\bin;

For more help on install Rtools correctly, please see this guide:

http://thecoatlessprofessor.com/programming/rcpp/install-rtools-for-rcpp/

Answer 2

I had exactly the same problem on a 32-bit OS with Windows 7. I solved it by using an earlier version of R: R 3.2.5

Answer 3

This is a bad interaction between RStudio and R 3.3.x on Windows, arising from a bad interaction with RStudio + the new compiler toolchain used to build R on Windows.

There are a couple solutions:

1. Install the preview release of RStudio: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/preview/

2. Switch to the 64bit version of R,

3. Roll back to R 3.2.x.