0.9.7 fails to come up on Windows 7

[KariK]

I just did an upgrade to Calibre 0.9.7 on my Windows 7 (64-bit) desktop
system. My old release was 0.8.17. The upgrade seemed to succeed,
I did get the Finish button in the Upgrade window, and the run Calibre
checkbox was marked. I clicked on the Finish button, and I could see the
calibre.exe task running, but I did not get the user interface popping up.
I then killed the process with the Task Manager and double clicked on the
calibre desktop icon, and that restarted the calibre.exe process, but again
no window showing up. Any suggestions to fix the problem or debug it?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by KariK

I then killed the process with the Task Manager and double clicked on the calibre desktop icon, and that restarted the calibre.exe process, but again no window showing up. Any suggestions to fix the problem or debug it?

How many books in your library?
How long did you wait before you killed the process?
Is it starting minimized to the system tray?
Restart your computer and try again.

[PeterT]

Have you had a 2nd monitor active at any point? It's possible that calibre is launching on a screen location you can't see..

[KariK]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

How many books in your library?
How long did you wait before you killed the process?
Is it starting minimized to the system tray?
Restart your computer and try again.

I have about 550 books in my library. The first time I waited about five
minutes before killing the process. The second time I left the process
running so it was running for several hours. There is no sign of the
application in the system tray. It also does not show up in the Task
Manager Applications tab.

A reboot did not solve the problem. After the reboot, when I restarted
Calibre, I did see the logo (the books) at the center of the screen for a
brief moment, but then it disappeared. The Web Server is also
unresponsive.


I have never had more than one monitor on this system, so do not think it
is putting the window outside my screen. Also, there should still be an icon
in the system tray if that was the case.

[theducks]

Not in the task manager tab, probably means it crashed silently

Un-install Calibre,
Reboot, just to start with a clean slate.

delete the previous download and get a fresh copy from the official site (Do Not use a download manager program).
Do a clean install.
Start Calibre (You can watch the status in the Task manager)
Do not rush to Kill the process, some updates (I don't have a list of which releases do this) will modify the database structure, that can take some time depending on the size of the Library. Killing that process is probably the worst thing you could do .

[KariK]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not in the task manager tab, probably means it crashed silently

Un-install Calibre,
Reboot, just to start with a clean slate.

delete the previous download and get a fresh copy from the official site (Do Not use a download manager program).
Do a clean install.
Start Calibre (You can watch the status in the Task manager)
Do not rush to Kill the process, some updates (I don't have a list of which releases do this) will modify the database structure, that can take some time depending on the size of the Library. Killing that process is probably the worst thing you could do .

Can you say "crashed" if the process is still there? I would call it hung.

I uninstalled Calibre, rebooted, and installed a clean copy, downloaded from calibre-ebook.com. I still got the same behavior: got the large logo for a moment, and the calibre.exe process is there, but not in the Applications tab, not in the task bar, and the web server is not responding. I left it running and it has been there for a couple of hours so far. How long should I leave it there before I kill it? Is there any other way to kill it than the Task Manager?

So what is the next step? Should I run the calibre-debug process with the -g flag from the CLI? Is there some other way to debug this?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by KariK

Can you say "crashed" if the process is still there? I would call it hung.

I uninstalled Calibre, rebooted, and installed a clean copy, downloaded from calibre-ebook.com. I still got the same behavior: got the large logo for a moment, and the calibre.exe process is there, but not in the Applications tab, not in the task bar, and the web server is not responding. I left it running and it has been there for a couple of hours so far. How long should I leave it there before I kill it? Is there any other way to kill it than the Task Manager?

So what is the next step? Should I run the calibre-debug process with the -g flag from the CLI? Is there some other way to debug this?

Uninstall 'Roboform' ?

[PeterT]

Delete the calibre preferences folder and see if that helps.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Delete the calibre preferences folder and see if that helps.

I concur, simply uninstalling and reinstalling does not remove the configuration.

Make sure calibre is not running then find the configuration folder and rename or delete it. On my machine it is here C:\Users\Walt\AppData\Roaming\calibre. Now start calibre, a new config folder wil be created fresh and you should be good to go.

Good Luck.

[KariK]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

I concur, simply uninstalling and reinstalling does not remove the configuration.

Make sure calibre is not running then find the configuration folder and rename or delete it. On my machine it is here C:\Users\Walt\AppData\Roaming\calibre. Now start calibre, a new config folder wil be created fresh and you should be good to go.

Good Luck.

Did all that and did get the configuration window. Passed in an empty directory for the books and it seemed happy, again flashed the logo, and then has been running as before for more than seven hours. This is with an empty library. I will leave it running overnight, but am not holding my breath.

The library directory (which was empty) now has a 114 KB metadata.db file and nothing else. The calibre.exe process is still running, but the Task Manager Applications tab does not list it, the system tray does not show it, and the content server is not responding. The Resource Monitor does not show the process doing any IO (does not list the process at all). The Resource Monitor shows the system very lightly loaded, almost no disk activity, 49% of memory in use, no network activity to speak of, CPU usage about 2%.

Any further suggestions?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by KariK

Did all that and did get the configuration window. Passed in an empty directory for the books and it seemed happy, again flashed the logo, and then has been running as before for more than seven hours. This is with an empty library. I will leave it running overnight, but am not holding my breath.
...
Any further suggestions?

Something on your machine is preventing calibre from moving forward. Most likely culprits are a firewall or antivirus or other low level protection system. Typically the new version of calibre will have to be added to a white list to run.

You could try running the portable version (this is the version I run from my C drive). If that doesn't work you can get more info by starting calibre from the command line using calibre-debug -g at some point it should error.

***Read this thread*** it sounds very much like your problem. It took her until page 3 of the thread, but she solved a very odd problem that would cause exactly what you're seeing.

Last but not least you can go back to your old version.

[KariK]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

You could try running the portable version (this is the version I run from my C drive). If that doesn't work you can get more info by starting calibre from the command line using calibre-debug -g at some point it should error.

Ah, problem solved!

Since the calibre-debug was easier to run, I tried it first. I got this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2>calibre-debug -g
Starting up...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\gui2\main.py", line 260, in initialize
self.initialize_db()
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\gui2\main.py", line 241, in initialize_db
self.initialize_db_stage2(db, None)
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\gui2\main.py", line 210, in initialize_db_stage2
self.start_gui(db)
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\gui2\main.py", line 166, in start_gui
main.initialize(self.library_path, db, self.listener, self.actions)
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\gui2\ui.py", line 188, in initialize
from calibre.utils.fonts import fontconfig
File "C:\calibre\src\calibre\utils\fonts\__init__.p y", line 16, in <module>
raise RuntimeError('Failed to load fontconfig with error:'+_fc_err)
RuntimeError: Failed to load fontconfig with error:No module named fontconfig
and then it hung the same way as before. Looking at the paths above, I realized it was seeing my old Python source. I renamed the directory, and now I get the GUI window. Thanks to everyone who helped.

One more problem (I hope): how do I specify my library to this new release? It shows only one book, the QuickStart one. I ran the wizard and it looks like somehow it took the empty directory I had specified before to it. I tried to set it back to the real library, but it insists that the directory should be empty! Is there a way around this?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by KariK

One more problem (I hope): how do I specify my library to this new release? It shows only one book, the QuickStart one. I ran the wizard and it looks like somehow it took the empty directory I had specified before to it. I tried to set it back to the real library, but it insists that the directory should be empty! Is there a way around this?

Go to the library icon and click the small arrow. Now select switch/create and choose the top option and point calibre to your existing library.

[KariK]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Go to the library icon and click the small arrow. Now select switch/create and choose the top option and point calibre to your existing library.

Ok, that worked. Thanks again to everyone who helped, you guys are great.