Since updating today, Zwift won’t start. It doesn’t get past initializing the patcher. On a Surface Pro 7. Any ideas? tried firewall and AV, makes no difference. Also tried starting as administrator but no joy. Completely re-installed Zwift, renamed old folders to start fresh and still same after several reboots. Nothing in the Windows event logs.
Maybe OneDrive?
I also tried that, disabled OneDrive and re-installed. Still no change. There is no file locks on but patcher doesn’t start. I don’t get the ZwiftApp installed. Seems to have have been a problem in the past too. I presume ZwiftApp gets installed by Patcher but I don’t get that far.
what about launcher error codes?
no, every time it stops here:
[13:32:06 2023-10-30] Launcher: Auto Startup is Enabled.
[13:32:06 2023-10-30] Launcher: Launcher Version Number 1.1.10
[13:32:06 2023-10-30] Launcher: Initializing UI Components
[13:32:06 2023-10-30] Launcher: Initializing Tray Components
[13:32:06 2023-10-30] Launcher: Initializing Patcher
did you figure your problem?
Sort of. Support asked me to create a new Windows user account. I used Zwift in that and it worked fine so I just leave the account for Zwift. Bit of a hack but it works.
For anyone watching from Zwift, this shouldn’t happen if you stored data in AppData rather than in the Documents folder.
I figured out the problem. I had mapped my “Downloads” folder in Windows to a USB drive because the internal storage is quite small. If the USB drive is in it starts, if it isn’t it won’t. I suspect that the Zwift updater checks for the absolute file path that the Downloads folder is expected to be at and errors out if it isn’t there. There is a default downloads alternative if the folder isn’t available in Windows (usually \Documents\Downloads) so the Zwift coders might be able to soft link it in some way instead or use the AppData folder.
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Thank you for updating the post with this information - this solved my exact issue. Just by chance I had backed-up some folders recently which included moving my downloads folder and windows threw up an error whenever I navigated to ‘downloads’ using the quick access toolbar.
After recreating the original downloads folder (so that windows download location pointed to a real folder), Zwift launched normally and started the update process.
Frustrating that the log does not provide any information on this and it seems like this hasn’t been addressed since you first posted 6 months ago, but thanks very much, and sharing my update here in case it helps anyone!
you’re welcome - glad it helped!