etcher: Etcher waits for a thread. GUI not showing. Win10

I thought that I had this problem, but while reading this issue, the GUI finally popped up. So it could be that it just takes a reeeally long time on some systems.

I haven’t been able to reproduce this one, I think it requires a somewhat specific configuration, it would be interesting to know if it’s hardware or software

I suspect it is as well, and my question is, why over the last 3 years has there been no indication of anyone collecting detailed information from all the affected people to see if there is a common thread?Also if there is a clear point where it seems to have happened, the above version 1.1.2 works for me, the differences between that version and the next non-working version should be checked.

Are there any frameworks or anything this software uses?

C:\Users\crossmr\AppData\Local\Programs\balena-etcher>balenaEtcher.exe --disable-gpu

C:\Users\crossmr\AppData\Local\Programs\balena-etcher> (node:16800) [DEP0005] DeprecationWarning: Buffer() is deprecated due to security and usability issues. Please use the Buffer.alloc(), Buffer.allocUnsafe(), or Buffer.from() methods instead.

That’s the result when I run it with -disable-gpu

still doesn’t start, but a minor issue is present.

Working on it, the CI is building the packages which takes ~1h so we can test the new release

@GrandNewbien nice find, thanks!

Sure thing

ELECTRON_ASAR.js:173 Uncaught Error: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.
\\?\C:\Users\Nionor\AppData\Local\Temp\nswA4CF.tmp\app\resources\app.asar.unpacked\node_modules\lzma-native\binding\lzma_native.node
    at process.module.(anonymous function) [as dlopen] (ELECTRON_ASAR.js:173:20)
    at Object.Module._extensions..node (module.js:598:18)
    at Object.module.(anonymous function) [as .node] (ELECTRON_ASAR.js:187:18)
    at Module.load (module.js:488:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:447:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:439:3)
    at Module.require (module.js:498:17)
    at require (internal/module.js:20:19)
    at C:\Users\Nionor\AppData\Local\Temp\nswA4CF.tmp\app\resources\app.asar\node_modules\lzma-native\index.js:14:14
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Nionor\AppData\Local\Temp\nswA4CF.tmp\app\resources\app.asar\node_modules\lzma-native\index.js:626:3)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Nionor\AppData\Local\Temp\nswA4CF.tmp\app\resources\app.asar\node_modules\lzma-native\index.js:628:3)
    at Module._compile (module.js:571:32)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:580:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:488:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:447:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:439:3)

For people still having this issue, please try installing https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads if possible. Either way, there’s not much we can do about it currently as it seems to be an issue with the Electron framework

I had the same issue with 1.5.99 and running the compatibility troubleshooter let the program run. It selected Windows 8 startup mode automatically.

I wanted to pop in with a possible workaround, since I experienced a no-launch situation on Windows 10, as well (on an Insiders build, fwiw). I was able to get Etcher to launch the GUI by running the exe in Windows 8 compatibility mode.

@stoneRdev Don’t want to sound salty but just informative so bear with me for a minute - a minority of users having an issue doesn’t justify dropping all the work-in-progress we have for an issue that we’re not even able to reproduce, given the fact that we’re just two people working on this project. Often users are also chiming in on different versions which have different issues so what you see might be the GUI not showing on an old version, which then is fixed, and then the issue comes back for another reason but yet it’s reported in the same place, so it’s sometimes also hard to understand what a user is reporting - e.g. if an issue is closed and a user is running a different version than the one reported, it’s most likely better to just open a new issue with the new details as the old issue isn’t valid for that version anymore and might be due to a totally different aspect that came after.

@lurch Im not sure, but either way more communication from the devs would be highly appreciated. This is a very popular piece of software that is referred to from many large names (Such as arduino, RPI, various linux distros, etc). With such an enormous user-base I would imagine that the developers would be scrambling to find a fix as all these people are reporting the same issue (which I am having as well. Hi, I’m having this issue too, fix yet?) and would be on PR the entire time to ensure that their brand isn’t damaged from lack of basic operation. Imagine the number of new organic users coming in from these other large names like, for example, the RaspberryPI website, which does mention that this is the preferred software for flashing. Those new organic users are going to come up to this blank UI and you’ll lose a good percent of them there. A good percent that could have really gotten into it and maybe purchased your pro product.

Idk man, great power comes great responsibility, and many people complaining of the same issue with no response or fix doesn’t seem responsible given the amount of brand trust other (Bigger, might I add) brands put into your product. It doesn’t seem responsible that this issue is marked as closed, yet many to this day are having the same issue that popped up years ago.

It’s likely that there are actually multiple separate problems, some of which happen to display the same symptoms? 🤷

@lurch right. This issue though refers to very old versions and many things have changed, some of them were also fundamental changes/version upgrades. Last report was from 1.5.72 so before reopening, I think it’s worth asking @pauldsmyth if he has had any luck with the latest versions, both Portable and Installer, and if not, if he can share a bit more wrt the behaviour

After Upgrading from Win7 to Win10 Etcher 1.5.5 now starts and shows its GUI.

https://github.com/electron-userland/electron-prebuilt-compile/issues/36

I’ve found this thread that helped solve the issue. I can confirm this issue only occurs on my acer laptop.

Thank you so much for this tip. I had the same problem of the missing GUI on my Win7Pro-64 when trying the latest versions of etcher. The older 1.1.2 version worked just fine!

@megusd You can find old releases here: https://github.com/resin-io/etcher/releases

Same problem with v1.2.1 installer AND portable. Windows 7 64bits in my case. I have no problem with v1.1.2 portable, I have not tested with the v1.1.2 installer.