Android studio process Scanning files to index looping forever

Question

Today when I started Android Studio it got stuck with "Scanning files to index..." in the background process and it never finishes. I can open the background processes display and see it looping over the same directories. Yesterday it was working fine and there were no issues with my project.

I tried:

• clearing caches and restart;
• I tried deleting the system caches directory in C:\Users\xxx\.AndroidStudio3.5\system\caches and restarting;
• Disconnected all devices, no AVDs running;
• reinstalled the Android Studio (3.5.2 built 31-Oct-2019), I already had the latest, but WTH!
• rebooted windows!

Is there a way to kill this process. I cannot do builds or debug.

I looked at this answer but it is old and nothing suggested helped.

Answer 1

Out of desperation I re-installed Android Studio, but first uninstalled it removing the user settings (which I didn't do on the previous uninstall). Threw in a couple of reboots between uninstall and re-install and start up. This seems to have fixed the problem for me!

I have no rational explanation for why, other than something in the user settings directory was causing the problem. I guess if you have a similar problem remember to check the box to delete the user settings when doing the uninstall. It's a shame that this kind of issue doesn't have a work around, it seems to happen intermittently over the years and versions of the Android Studio.