TimeoutError when starting a kernel still poping out

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

I started Spyder and hovered over one of those red “X” icons in the editor margin to see the tooltip, and this dialog box appeared

Traceback

  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder\plugins\ipythonconsole\plugin.py", line 1083, in set_spyder_breakpoints
    cl.shellwidget.set_spyder_breakpoints()
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder\plugins\ipythonconsole\widgets\debugging.py", line 143, in set_spyder_breakpoints
    CONF.get('run', 'breakpoints', {}))
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder_kernels\comms\commbase.py", line 538, in __call__
    call_dict, call_data, self._comm_id)
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder\plugins\ipythonconsole\comms\kernelcomm.py", line 130, in _get_call_return_value
    with self.comm_channel_manager(comm_id, queue_message=not interrupt):
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\contextlib.py", line 81, in __enter__
    return next(self.gen)
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder\plugins\ipythonconsole\comms\kernelcomm.py", line 87, in comm_channel_manager
    timeout)
  File "C:\Users\AlexStoll\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\spyder\plugins\ipythonconsole\comms\kernelcomm.py", line 168, in _wait
    raise TimeoutError(timeout_msg)
TimeoutError: Timeout while waiting for comm port.

Versions

• Spyder version: 4.1.1
• Python version: 3.6.8
• Qt version: 5.9.6
• PyQt5 version: 5.9.2
• Operating System: Windows 10

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
atomicwrites >=1.2.0           :  1.3.0 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                :  3.0.4 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0            :  1.3.0 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111    :  20181111 (OK)
intervaltree                   :  None (OK)
IPython >=4.0                  :  7.13.0 (OK)
jedi =0.15.2                   :  0.15.2 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                :  5.6.1 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0               :  0.9.2 (OK)
paramiko >=2.4.0               :  2.7.1 (OK)
parso =0.5.2                   :  0.5.2 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                :  4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4              :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                   :  5.7.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                 :  2.6.1 (OK)
pylint >=0.25                  :  2.4.4 (OK)
pyls >=0.31.9;<0.32.0          :  0.31.9 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=2.8               :  2.8 (OK)
qtawesome >=0.5.7              :  0.7.0 (OK)
qtconsole >=4.6.0              :  4.7.1 (OK)
qtpy >=1.5.0                   :  1.9.0 (OK)
rtree >=0.8.3                  :  0.9.3 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6                 :  2.4.0 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=1.9.0;<1.10.0 :  1.9.0 (OK)
watchdog                       :  None (OK)
zmq >=17                       :  18.1.1 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                  :  None (OK)
matplotlib >=2.0.0             :  None (OK)
numpy >=1.7                    :  1.18.1 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1                :  None (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                 :  1.4.1 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3                  :  None (OK)

[ccordoba12]

I tried a lot things to reproduce this but I couldn’t. Let’s wait to see if more people reports it.

[ardunster]

After reviewing this thread that spyder-bot indicated was a duplicate of my #12900, I recalled that when I first loaded Spyder today (fresh install in a new venv, also; started via Anaconda) the kernel did not start, I had some kind of waiting error that I didn’t take much note of (using “restart kernel” in the dropdown resolved it). After doing that, I had closed spyder and reopened it manually from command line with my new venv active, trying to determine if the fresh install in a different venv should load the files I had active in my previous venv or not (apparently it does).

Didn’t know whether this might be relevant information so I figured I should include it.