Windows 11 - Zwift Will Not Launch

I tried for the last 15min to get Zwift to launch, but it does not come up at all. I uninstalled. Restarted. Installed using the newest install file from the main page. Still doesn’t come up. There was a Windows 11 update overnight. I’m not sure if that’s the cause. I don’t see the Zwift launcher in my tray or anything. Please help. :frowning:

Hi @William_Miller1

Are you using OneDrive (or a similar cloud service) to back up your Documents folder? That is a known cause of your symptoms. Other reasons are on this Support Hub page. Would you read through and see if any of those apply to you?

Also search Windows Explorer and search for “Zwift.” If you see multiple folders (Zwift, Zwift1, Zwift2, etc) that means you’ll want to delete everything Zwift related and start over. This is a more complete process than the usual Windows “uninstall” process. Instructions are here. Be mindful to move your custom workout files out of harm’s way before you start deleting everything else.

If these common solutions don’t help - please reach out to Community Support so we can do a deeper dive into your specific situation.

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None of these applied to me, and even following the instructions for a clean install I’m still stuck. I have emailed support.

This happened to me as well this morning. Unable to launch after a major update.
However, after a couple of restarts and checking no further W11 updates, everything suddenly loaded fine as if the previous experience never happened. No idea why.

Oo that’s promising. I’ll check after work!

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Isn’t this more important than work? Where are your priorities :rofl:??!!

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Haha. If I was still WFH, I’d be all over it. :stuck_out_tongue:

No dice. It just does not open at all. :frowning:

Have you checked that it’s not being blocked by your av or firewall

I checked that windows security isn’t blocking the app from opening. I just double checked the firewall and it’s fully allowed to access the network.

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Was just a thought, as I know before now I’ve been asked if I want to allow it

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Zwift support had me try to launch using another network. Used my phone. Still nothing. Also, it seems the game is not fully installed as ziwftapp isn’t in the folder. :person_shrugging:

Hi folks, if you check your Documents/Zwift/Logs folder, does you most recent Launcher_Log.txt have any error codes?

Turns out my Windows was just going bad and had to be reinstalled. All good now.

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Hi Rowdy,

I found out that the Launcher_Log.txt has mentioned that Auto start-up is disabled. Is there a solution for this?

Thanks and regards

I had the same experience as William. But OneDrive was the problem. What happened is, I had been using two different PCs to run Zwift, depending on where I was at. And everything worked well until I experienced some file save issues with some MIcrosoft 365 files, so I TURNED ONEDRIVE OFF on the PC that didn’t run Zwift often. The epiphany came upon reading Shuji’s input. So I turned OneDrive back on and “eureka”, Zwift opened and ran just fine.

New to all this. I just want to share my experience with Windows 11 incase it helps anyone else. I tried many of the suggestions in the forums. None worked for me. I use my phone as a mobile hotspot as my wifi (has so far worked great for my streaming needs). A friend took my laptop to his house to find a solution to the problem and it uploaded and worked straight away. The only difference was that he has broadband. Now that Zwift is uploaded, it seems to work fine with my hotspot situation. One more thing, clicking on the Zwift desktop icon does not work for me. I have to go into my settings and find ZwiftApp to gain access.

It sounds like the launcher is not working. Have you spoken to Zwift support? There might be a launcher log file available that they could look at.

If the launcher doesn’t work properly, you may not get future updates and have to reinstall with every new release.

Thanks. I’ll look into that.

Mate I finally figured it out you need to delete everything from PC that’s Zwift related pictures files extra files everything clean then uploaded again and there you crazy :rofl: