Bugs in sqldeveloper 1.5.3 build main-5783

Question

Downloaded today. Encountered the following problems
<ul><li>updating from 1.3.x, the "check for updates" facility found 1.5.3, downloaded &lt; 100k and asked me to restart. After restart it was still 1.3. </li>
<li>     if i clicked the 'download now' link in the 'check for updates' dialog box nothing happened</li>
<li>when i got through to the final step of the check for updates wizard, i get a very bizarre dialog box (can't see any way here to include an image).
</li>
</ul>
So, instead i manually download 1.5 and unzipped it.
<ul><li>sometimes when i close 1.5, the sqldeveloper.exe process stays around. I had 5 of them at one point!</li>
<li>the "dont show tips at startup" option does nothing. Tips ALWAYS appear.</li>
<li>     sometimes when i start 1.5, my list of connections is empty</li>
<li>     sometimes the 'new connection' menu option does nothing</li>
</ul>

Answer 1

You must mean release 1.1.3, as we did not have a 1.3 production build.
The Check for Updates facility is no longer available for product update, it's there for adding in 3rd party extensions and third party drivers, which is why there was no change to your install.
The bizarre dialog you saw in the Check for Updates is a Java default that displays when something fails in the Check For Updates utility. In this particular case you're running into a bug that has been fixed in later release.
With the connection errors showing, you should delete the system folder ( as K suggested) to reset to factory defaults. That should allow the connections to behave correctly. This should include the Tip of the Day on startup. I have just verified that I can swicth this off in 1.5.3., so I suspect there is some corruption in the system folders. There is no problem deleting these as they are created on first startup and then maintained after that.
Sue