Cannot run emulator in Android Studio

It is possible that you really have no system images. Double-check that $ANDROID_HOME/system-images/android-<YOUR DESIRED API>/armeabi-v7a exists and is not empty. If they really are missing - install/reinstall with SDK manager.

Go to Tools | Android | AVD Manager

Click the arrow under the Actions column on far right (where error message is)

Choose Edit

Leave the default selection (For me, MNC x86 Android M)

Click Next

Click Finish

It saves your AVD and error is now gone from last column. And emulator works fine now.

Just fixed this. Hope this helps others. (Issue as in Android studio v2) This issue is for arm emulators. In this example I am using armeabi-v7a API 16

The fix is three steps:

Step 1: Open sdk manager and make sure that you have installed ARM EABI v7a System Image

Step 2. This is the obvious case of adding the location of sdk to system variables.

Right click on "This PC" icon on desktop, then

Properties -> Advanced system settings -> Environment Variables... Then add the path to sdk as new to system variables section using variable name ANDROID_SDK_ROOT.

Step 3. Restart Android Studio for changes to register. After correcting the ANDROID_SDK_ROOT is undefined issue, the emulator still can't find the kernel files even though it can see that the sdk manager installed it to

path-to-sdk\sdk\system-images\android-16\default\armeabi-v7a\kernel-qemu

The reason is a mix-up between the location the sdk manager installs the kernel file to and the location the emulator is looking for it.

If you open your config.ini (Android Studio -> AVD Mananger -> "Show On Disk") for your emulator you will see the following line:

image.sysdir.1=add-ons\addon-google_apis-google-16\images\armeabi-v7a\

(i.e \path-to-sdk\add-ons\addon-....)

Instead of changing this value in the config.ini file I copied

path-to-sdk\sdk\system-images\android-16\default\armeabi-v7a\kernel-qemu

(kernel file from the folder sdk manager installed)

to

\path-to-sdk\add-ons\addon-google_apis-google-16\images\armeabi-v7a\

And that was the missing kernel file. You can run the emulator. (You will need to close the Android Studio and reopen again) Give the emulator some time as it is 10x times slower compared to x86. (Mine took about 5 minutes to start)

I got it fixed by running "C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\AVD Manager.exe" and repairing my broken device.