Hi,
The trace bitmap dialog box is not popping up for me. I am using windows 10, inkscape .92 on a surface. I have renamed the preferences file, and that still doesn't work.

Look at the right, into the dock bar. There you should see an icon and / or text that symbolizes the minified dialog. To maximize, click on it.

It may also be that you need to scroll down a bit, or close some other dialogs before you can easily spot it.

Minifying is caused by clicking on the small triangle in the top right corner of a dialog.

Or if you already had the Trace Bitmap dialog opened, but you closed it, and it won't open again -- that's a bug. Unfortunately, the only fix is to close all instances of Inkscape and re-open. Once you have it open, don't close the Trace Bitmap dialog until you're completely finished with it.

Hopefully it won't take too long to fix that bug. I know it just happened to me the other day

I have a similar problem as well. The "Trace bitmap" menu item is missing from the pull down menu under "Path". However, if I right click on the image, I can see the "Trace bitmap" menu item. However, it produces nothing. No dialog box. I looked around everywhere, and there is no sign of it doing anything. It seems my inkscape is missing this module. This is version 0.92 on Linux x86_64, kernel 4.4.118

Did you install Inkscape through your ppa? Or did you compile it yourself? Or maybe used Snap?

@asarangan Your Inkscape version may have been compiled without the potrace dependency being installed on the computer of the person who created it. You would, in this case, also notice that the paint bucket tool is absent.

To fix, install Inkscape from a different source, or install the dependency (libpotrace-dev) before you compile (and update to 0.92.3 to get the best available version).