BASEPATH and $system_path

I am kind of stuck. I took a look at the error log file and I see
ERROR - 2018-09-17 20:18:21 --> $config['composer_autoload'] is set to TRUE but C:\xampp\htdocs\sub_crud\application\vendor/autoload.php was not found.

I see that there is an autoload.php in the vendor directory. but it seems to be blank. How to fix this? Reinstall composer?

here is what is in it:

?php

// autoload.php @generated by Composer

//require_once __DIR__ . '/composer/autoload_real.php';

//return ComposerAutoloaderInit0403ce8f3a8c9abfa4fb72526b83ca93::getLoader();

proof that an old dog can learn new tricks