I'm not sure what's broken in your environment, but something
definitely is awry! There's absolutely no reason you should have to
uninstall/reinstall to just add a measly topic.
First of all, you're not trying to work the project over a
network, are you? If so, don't do that.
If you're still having trouble working the project on your
local machine, try generating/publishing to entirely different
directories. That should do it.
If not, come back with more details.
Good luck,
Leon