Update on Windows to 7.19 - Calibre will not open now

[Duker10]

Today I installed the 7.19 update on my Win 11 laptop. I have no external monitors connected to this system for the window to have disappeared onto (one of the suggestions I have read).

When I double-click the Calibre shortcut, right-click/Run as Administrator the shortcut, or run calibre.exe from within the install directory, nothing happens. I see a small blue circle with the cursor arrow for a second, and then it goes away. Calibre does not open. I have checked Task Manager and do not see any instance of Calibre in the Processes or Services.

I have downgraded to 7.17, 7.11 and 6.29, and none of them will open. Not sure where to go from here.

When I run the command calibre-debug -g this is the output I see

C:\Users\ocpsd>calibre-debug -g
calibre 7.19 embedded-python: True
Windows-10-10.0.22631-SP0 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '10', '10.0.22631')
Python 3.11.5
Windows: ('10', '10.0.22631', 'SP0', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Interface language: None
EXE path: C:\Program Files\Calibre\calibre-debug.exe

[kovidgoyal]

Reboot in safe mode and see if it starts.

[Duker10]

It starts up in Safe Mode, yes and creates the Library folder. Then when I return to regular Windows OS it won't open again.

Not sure that I want to be rebooting to Safe Mode every time I want to use it though :/

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Duker10

It starts up in Safe Mode, yes and creates the Library folder. Then when I return to regular Windows OS it won't open again.

Not sure that I want to be rebooting to Safe Mode every time I want to use it though :/

You don't reboot to safe mode just to use calibre. You take things out of your startup one-by-one until you find what's stopping calibre from running. You do have to reboot after each removal. Also, stop your AV or remove it if need be.

[Duker10]

Seems unfortunate to have to jump through those hoops to deal with an issue where a program did work, and now it doesn't work, and the only thing that changed was updating the program to the newest version.
Def won't be removing my AV - if that's the solution then I guess it's bye bye to Calibre.

I will try to see if I can figure out if there is another program that may be trying to autostart that is interfering with Calibre. Looking at all the posts that now show up under my original post as suggestions it seems like this is more common of an issue though than specific to me.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Duker10

It starts up in Safe Mode, yes and creates the Library folder. Then when I return to regular Windows OS it won't open again.

Not sure that I want to be rebooting to Safe Mode every time I want to use it though :/

THen dont install malware on your computer that breaks other software and if you do that definitely dont come and complain in the forums of the software your malware breaks.

[Duker10]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

THen dont install malware on your computer that breaks other software and if you do that definitely dont come and complain in the forums of the software your malware breaks.

Wow, what an aggressive response. I wasn't criticizing your software at all - just the opposite, I think it is an amazing program which is why I am looking for a solution. I haven't installed any "Malware that breaks the software" - the software worked fine until I updated it to the newest version. As well, it seems that I am not the only person who has used this piece of software that has found this to be an issue. So it would seem that there may be something that has been changed within the code of the program that unintentionally may have an incompatibility with common system configurations. I wasn't at all "complaining in the forums" of software that my malware breaks, and I think it is very unfortunate that you got so defensive and lay the blame on the end user. I am a 50 year old user with plenty of experience using computers and know how to protect myself from malware, and ensure that I don't download or install anything that I do not know where it comes from. I'm jut not a programmer. I keep the antivirus software on my system to protect me from unintentional threats, such as the ad popups in this forum for instance that I have no control over. To blame me rather than to offer suggestions as to what steps can be taken to help diagnose the issue and improve your own programming seems very thin skinned and reactionary.

I applaud you for your ability to create a fantastic piece of software that I'm sure thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users find useful and appreciate at no cost to them, and wish I had the knowledge to be able to create something as useful and robust. That said, if someone who does not understand programming reaches out for assistance, it would be much more of a helpful response to offer suggestions as to how to mitigate the issue rather than feeling attacked and lashing out. I was only coming to this forum to see if there was anyone else with the same issue that may have a solution or workaround. I read other posts including a response that you provided suggesting the calibre-debug -g in Command Prompt and then posting the result thinking that maybe there would be something in there that would help diagnose what the issue may be.

I guess I've offended you so I won't expect any kind of a solution to be offered to me that will help fix the problem. Thank you for the years that I have been able to use your product flawlessly, and I hope that someday down the line I may be able to figure things out and get it working again for myself.

[kovidgoyal]

You have something on your computer that is preventing calibre from running. Most likely your antivirus. I told you how to confirm that. You did that. You now have proof that your system has software that is interfering with calibre. Your next step is to turn of such software one by one till you find the culprit and then disable and replace it or go to its forums and ask its developers to fix what they broke. This has nothing to do with "system configurations" and everything to do with some malware, most likely the antivirus program. The entire category of antivirus programs is malware.

[Duker10]

That is a much more productive reply, thank you. I have disabled my AV program and tried the Calibre program again, with no luck. I have turned off all programs set to start up with windows and restarted, again with no luck. I appreciate you breaking things down for me like that. I will continue to troubleshoot and see what I can determine is causing the conflict. Thank you

[Duker10]

If it makes any difference to you, I use ESET Antivirus

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Duker10

If it makes any difference to you, I use ESET Antivirus

For Windows (10 and 11 at least), Windows Defender is quite enough - there's no need to install additional antivirus programs. For ads there's uBlock Origin, a browser extension.

[Duker10]

And strangely enough, I just tried to open (successfully) Calibre on my desktop system. Not sure what is going on with my laptop causing the incompatibility, but it works fine on my desktop. I have updated to 7.19, still works fine. Thought (since I saw other posts suggesting the same) that it may be my graphics driver so I updated my desktop driver after I confirmed 7.19 was working, but it still worked after updating that driver as well, so it doesn't seem to be a conflict there. Both systems use the same AV program, so I guess that's not it either.

Running calibre-debug on the desktop system results in this output:

calibre 7.19 embedded-python: True
Windows-10-10.0.22631-SP0 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '10', '10.0.22631')
Python 3.11.5
Windows: ('10', '10.0.22631', 'SP0', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Interface language: None
EXE path: C:\Program Files\Calibre2\calibre-debug.exe
QPA platform: windows
devicePixelRatio: 1.0
logicalDpi: 96.0 x 96.0
physicalDpi: 69.86819484240687 x 69.80152671755725
ApplicationPaletteChange event ignored
Using calibre Qt style: True

Anyway, I appreciate your taking the time to offer some suggestions Kovid Goyal. I'll continue trying to figure out what is different between the two systems that is causing the issue.

[theducks]

Calibre makes use of the Users designated TEMP

But I would start by Run (as Administrator): sfc /scannow

That is Windows System File Check

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Duker10

Seems unfortunate to have to jump through those hoops to deal with an issue where a program did work, and now it doesn't work, and the only thing that changed was updating the program to the newest version.
Def won't be removing my AV - if that's the solution then I guess it's bye bye to Calibre.

I will try to see if I can figure out if there is another program that may be trying to autostart that is interfering with Calibre. Looking at all the posts that now show up under my original post as suggestions it seems like this is more common of an issue though than specific to me.

calibre is using QT. QT is written by others. It was updated to the a newer version of QT. If you really want to complain, go complain to those who maintain QT.

If your AV allows you to ignore directories, have it ignore calibre, it's settings, and your libraries. What AV are you running? I run Windows Security and I have no problem with calibre. Windows Security does allow you to ignore directories. So you can try that.

I do suggest you stop every program that you run at startup and then try calibre. If it works, then it's a matter of finding wich program is causing the problem.

[JSWolf]

Another thing to try is set the following environment variable in variable in case the newer QT is not liking your video card driver.

QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-gpu"