e-book viewer not responding

[deb27]

Recently my e-book viewer stopped working. I was running Calibre 5.4.2 and when I double click on a book, all I get is the window frame from the e-book viewer which says Loading book and Not Responding. After searching this forum, I tried running calibre from the command line

calibre-debug -w filename

I've attached screen shots of what I got.
Meanwhile, I discovered that Apprentice Alf plugin was not compatible with Calibre 5 so I switched back to 4.23. Tried the same experiments and got the same result.

I'm running Windows 10 Pro version 10.0.19041.
I use Bitdefender Total Security AV and I did look through all the logs to ensure that it wasn't blocking any calibre processes. I saw no evidence of that.
I'm not sure what to try next.

[kovidgoyal]

Uninstall, delete C:\\Program Files\\Calibre2
(or wherever you chose to install calibre). Then re-install. And
dont worry, uninstalling will not affect your books/settings.

[deb27]

No luck.
After the uninstall, the C:\\Program Files\\Calibre2 folder was gone. I did not have to delete it. I searched the C drive for "Calibre2" and it was not found.

After the install I double clicked on several books (mobi format and azw3) but had the same problem as before (empty window frame not responding).

I installed calibre-64bit-4.23.0.msi

What else can I try? Is there debug information I can get which would help?

[kovidgoyal]

reboot in safe mode, check if it works there. If it does its your antivirus. The log you provided already tells me its a corrupted install (see th eline about the internal ICU error). If re-installing did not fix it it most likely means something on your computer is deleting/quarantining a file from the calibre isntallation folder.

[deb27]

Making progress!
Rebooting in safe mode worked.
Next, I disabled all non-windows startup services using msconfig.
That worked too.
Next I enabled all non-windows startup services except for those related to BitDefender (my AV/security software)
That worked too.

So...you are correct. It must be the antivirus/security software.

The next question is, there may be a setting in that software to tell it to ignore the calibre files/folders. Which folders are the ones I should try to protect? Just "Program Files/calibre2"? Or are there other folders?

Thanks for all the help!

[kovidgoyal]

For this error, yes, the Calibre2 folder is whats needed.

[deb27]

Thank you for all the help!

One interesting twist to the story...after I reset all of my windows startup options back to their original setting, my BitDefender total security stopped working. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it.
Now the e-book viewer is working again.

So the problem is solved although I'll probably never know why.

[deb27]

OK....this problem isn't actually solved. Apparently restarting my computer in Safe mode and then restarting it normally (without actually changing any of the start up features) fixes the problem temporarily. I've tried turning off everything in Bit Defender but that hasn't helped. I've given up. Maybe someday someone will come up with a solution. I'm out of ideas. And no, I'm not going to switch AV's. That's a lot of time, effort and money with no guarantee that it'll work.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by deb27

OK....this problem isn't actually solved. Apparently restarting my computer in Safe mode and then restarting it normally (without actually changing any of the start up features) fixes the problem temporarily. I've tried turning off everything in Bit Defender but that hasn't helped. I've given up. Maybe someday someone will come up with a solution. I'm out of ideas. And no, I'm not going to switch AV's. That's a lot of time, effort and money with no guarantee that it'll work.

It's actually no money at all to switch to a good AV. You can switch to Windows Defender for no money as it is included with Windows.

Try turning off Bit Defender and install the current version of Calibre and see what happens. Also, see if there is an update to your video car driver.

If you are running a laptop with dual video, run Calibre using the other video chip and see if it works.

Thing is, something is wrong with your system. It could be something you run at start. So disable one program at a time and keep trying Calibre. If you find Calibre works, then you'll know what not to run at start.

[pdofak]

Hi,
Love Caliber for years. Awesome useful tool. Thanks.
I have a question. Same topic, different application.
On Mac I have found it useful to drag a copy of the ebook-viewer from the Caliber package into the Applications folder and set ebook-viewer.app to be the default program for .epubs. Handy as heck for quick viewing epubs and has worked for years.
But now for some reason the book viewer still launches from within Caliber like it should but I can't manually run ebook-viewer nor does it successfully launch from an open file call.
The app icon's open animation happens but nothing after that.
I know it wasn't intended to be used in that standalone way but it proved handy.
I'm missing something somewhere. Thoughts?
Thanks, Patrick

[kovidgoyal]

You dont drag the viewer out of calibre into applications. Simply associate the viewer (ebook-viewer.app) from inside the calibre bundle.

[deb27]

Finally solved!!!!

I have 2 monitors. Using Windows built in "identify" feature, the one on the left is the primary (i.e. 1). The one on the right is secondary (i.e. 2).

If the Calibre window is on the secondary monitor, the ebook viewer will not open when I double click a book. If the Calibre window is on the primary (left) monitor, the viewer opens successfully.

[jimmy90]

i had the same issue and found that it depended on the setup of the second monitor.

if it was in 1920 x 1080 it worked fine.

if it was in 4k it refused to open.

this is with the --disable-gpu environtment variable set.