Hi fellows I occasionally fixed the issue by reinstalling spyder via Anaconda Navigator instead of conda install spyder. The version of spyder now is 5.5.1. Hope that would work for you

from spyder.

Hey @horseman314159, thanks for reporting. Please run the following command in the console

%pwd

and post the result here. That would help us to better understand your problem.

from spyder.

Here, the same behavior. On the first start of the debugger, I get the very same message displayed. But, only once:
"System cannot find the path specified" not twice.
%pwd -> 'C:\Users\Anton\Python\notebook'

My dependencies:

Mandatory:

atomicwrites >=1.2.0 : 1.4.0 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0 : 4.0.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0 : 2.2.1 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0 : 2.5.0 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111 : 20200713 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2 : 3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=8.13.0,<9.0.0,!=8.17.1 : 8.22.2 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2,<0.20.0 : 0.19.1 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7 : 1.0.1 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0 : 4.19.2 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0 : 23.13.1 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0 : 7.10.0 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0 : 1.5.0 (OK)
paramiko >=2.4.0 : 2.8.1 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0,<0.9.0 : 0.8.3 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0 : 4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4 : 0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3 : 5.9.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0 : 2.15.1 (OK)
pylint >=3.1,<4 : 3.1.0 (OK)
pylint_venv >=3.0.2 : 3.0.3 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0 : 0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.11.0,<1.12.0 : 1.11.0 (OK)
pylsp_black >=2.0.0,<3.0.0 : 2.0.0 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.2.0,<3.3.0 : 3.2.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2 : 0.2.2 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.3.1,<1.4.0 : 1.3.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.5.1,<5.6.0 : 5.5.1 (OK)
qtpy >=2.1.0 : 2.4.1 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7 : 1.0.1 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0 : 68.0.0 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6 : 5.0.2 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=2.5.1,<2.6.0 : 2.5.1 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0 : 4.2.1 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1 : 0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3 : 2.1.6 (OK)
zmq >=24.0.0 : 25.1.2 (OK)

Optional:

cython >=0.21 : None (NOK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0 : 3.8.3 (OK)
numpy >=1.7 : 1.26.3 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1 : 2.1.4 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0 : 1.11.4 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3 : 1.12 (OK)

from spyder.

Here, the same behavior. On the first start of the debugger, I get the very same message displayed

Could you post the message of the file you're trying to debug? Thanks!

from spyder.

Hey @horseman314159, thanks for reporting. Please run the following command in the console

%pwd

and post the result here. That would help us to better understand your problem.

C:\Users\my_user_name\Desktop

from spyder.

Here, the same behavior. On the first start of the debugger, I get the very same message displayed

Could you post the message of the file you're trying to debug? Thanks!

I wanted to recreate the issue, but stupidly updated Spyder via Anaconda Navigator (*) (like horseman314159, too) and it seems to be fixed ??? When i do %pwd in the console, it shows now:
%pwd -> 'C:\Users\Anton\Python\notebook'

before it showed, obviously without escaping back-slash:
%pwd -> 'C:\Users\Anton\Python\notebook'

(*)
Some may be of interest information :
Did a fresh install of Anaconda Navigator & Spyder 5.5.1 using Navigator into base env after ditching my previous Conda setup with everything removed.
Then I wanted to test Spyder 6.0 Alpha xx and installed it using conda in a newly created env "spyder-env" -> started it and played a little bit with it. Then closed Spyder 6 and started Spyder 5.5.1 for comparison again. After that, I wanted to try something in Spyder 6 - but it didn't start. I reset the spyder-env settings (shortcut in start menu) - but it still did not start. I was hoping, that Spyder 6 did not contaminate my Spyder 5 config directory :)
After that, I started to work with Spyder 5.5.1 again. At some point in time, Spyder 5 freeze and - it freeze so hard, that nothing worked anymore. I tried to kill python process in taskman. It tried - but after not forcefully killing it - nothing worked anymore. Windows (latest win10, 64bit) did not update display. Exiting other programs (firefox, taskman, explorer..) did not end their processes. Just a cold reboot helped here. (Really nothing worked. Waited for 10 mins -> cold reboot)
After reboot, Spyder 5 did not load, It stuck freeze upon initializing the plugins. No console, no variable manager, no toolbar. Although, the formerly opened files had been loaded showing the tabs to switch to the files. Here again, it freeze when I tried to click anywhere and/or close it for not doing anything -> reboot. I played this game 5 rounds then decided to reinstall Spyder.

This time, i did create a new environment "spyder" for the new installation and used anaconda navigator to install Spyder 5.5.2 into the new environment. Did use it to reload my project, but after doing this I though "its stupid to have two Versions of Spyder" and deleted it again.
Then the "base" env Spyder did not work at all. Reset of the setting did not help. As before, it did not initialize the toolbar, the console or the pane with the plugins variable manager. Using Anaconda Navigator, I updated to Spyder 5.5.2 in the base environment. It did not start either. Resetting the Spyder configuration did not help. I reverted back to Spyder 5.5.1 with Anaconda Navigator. It did not start.
Then, after googleing the issue, i reinstalled iPython console. It worked this after, finally.
Within this course of actions, something happened that lead to the "file not found" as described.

So, yesterday, I did update Spyder 5.5.1 to Spyder 5.5.4. The message of file not found is not displaying anymore.
the output of %pwd changed too. I don't know what happened in between.. :) I also can't reproduce it anymore.
I'm very sorry for not being of help here anymore and will post an update, if it comes back again.

(Thanks for the wonderful Spyder @ALL)

EDIT:
I may be misleading here or am trick-played by github. It removes the escaping '\' after submitting the comment. So actually, %pwd may have showed correctly escaped back-slashes in both cases. Can't reproduce it, though,

from spyder.

Ok, thanks for letting us know about this no longer being an issue @horseman314159 and @tony-pythony.

I'll leave this one open for a bit longer to see if someone else has the same problem.

from spyder.