Git Bash was updated and no longer works - the window opens then immediately closes :'(

[elostaunauRL]

I've been using an older version of git bash for a few years now.

Yesterday some major changes were made to my codebase and when I attempted to pull these changes in, my local repo immediately deleted 5 files in the codebase. I had never encountered this before so I created them again. When I went to git add, I received an error that the filepath was too long.
I asked about this in our dev channel and was told to run the following command: git config --system core.longpaths true
I ran this in the root of my cloned directory and also in the root of my .sln project. It didn't resolve the issue.
I was then told to update my git version. I updated to the latest version 2.50.1 from the web site.

Once the installation was done, I returned to my directory root and right-clicked to git bash. The window started to open then immediately closed.

I have since then resolved my long line issue (it needed to be run from User[user] dir.
I have been trying everything since then to resolve with no success. I've tried uninstalling, rebooting, reinstalling. I've tried to run as admin. I've tried checking paths. I've done quite a few searches and read quite a few discussion topics on this, I've also tried following some of the suggestions from Google AI - checking various configuration files. Nothing seems to work. I've also tried opening via command prompt to see if errors would display but none do.
I'm at a loss! Git GUI works fine. Git Bash does not. I rely on this daily.

I've been reduced to running git from the windows power shell, which would be fine except the auto-complete doesn't work and some of the colors configured by Windows are impossible to read (hello, why are we still using red text on blue backgrounds?). I've never been a fan of Git GUI. I don't want to use any other GUI integration.

Does anyone know a definitive way to get my Git Bash working again? Should I toss this computer out and start anew?

[dscho]

A couple of preliminaries:

• Your Windows version might be the culprit, there have been reports (and fixes) related to older Windows 10 versions recently.
• If you're missing auto-complete in PowerShell, you'll want to have a look at posh-git.

Now as to your Git Bash window opening and immediately closing, there are a couple of potential sources for bugs:

• The MinTTY terminal emulator. This is responsible for the window that you actually see and can interact with, and sometimes MinTTY upgrades break things, although that's rarely the case.
• The MSYS2 runtime. This is most often the case in such instances, and you can get better error messages by cutting out MinTTY from the equation, by running & "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\bash.exe" -li in a new PowerShell session.
• The Bash itself. This is really rarely the case. Even if it is the case, you should be able to get an error message by cutting out MinTTY.
• Some infrastructure changes in components such as the Bash profile. Again, cut out MinTTY and you should get a better idea.

There's also always the option of going through Git for Windows' snapshots, which include (almost) all the official Git for Windows releases but also intermediate releases. You could download the PortableGit variants of some snapshots, unpack them (either via 7-Zip, or by running them as .exe — they are self-extracting 7-Zip archives) into temporary folders and then run the git-bash.exe executables in those folders.