Why is npm start not working in react app? - reactjs

Question

I tried to run npm start to a React app that it was working perfectly, but now for some reason is not working. The mesage I recive is the following:
Error: Cannot find module 'C:\Users\albat\Desktop\personal_projects\alba_virtual_cv\index.js'
at Function.Module._resolveFilename (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:793:17)
at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:686:27)
at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1043:10)
at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:11 {
code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
requireStack: []
}
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! alba_virtual_cv#1.0.0 start: `node index.js`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the alba_virtual_cv#1.0.0 start script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! C:\Users\albat\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\_logs\2020-05-11T09_08_43_976Z-debug.log
And my package.json is the following:
{
"name": "alba_virtual_cv",
"version": "1.0.0",
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "node index.js"
},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"dependencies": {
"debug": "^4.1.1"
},
"devDependencies": {},
"description": ""
}
Please I need help to run the application again.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Run this before starting the project:
npm -i
This installs missing packages

Answer 2

It just means something went wrong when dependencies were installed the first time.
I suggest doing these three steps:
npm install -g npm#latest to update npm because it is sometimes buggy.
rm -rf node_modules to remove the existing modules.
npm install to re-install the project dependencies.
This should fix the problem.