notebook: Kernel error win32api

After launching any notebook, I get the following error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\web.py", line 1699, in _execute
    result = await result
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 742, in run
    yielded = self.gen.throw(*exc_info)  # type: ignore
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\notebook\services\sessions\handlers.py", line 72, in post
    type=mtype))
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 735, in run
    value = future.result()
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 742, in run
    yielded = self.gen.throw(*exc_info)  # type: ignore
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\notebook\services\sessions\sessionmanager.py", line 88, in create_session
    kernel_id = yield self.start_kernel_for_session(session_id, path, name, type, kernel_name)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 735, in run
    value = future.result()
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 742, in run
    yielded = self.gen.throw(*exc_info)  # type: ignore
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\notebook\services\sessions\sessionmanager.py", line 101, in start_kernel_for_session
    self.kernel_manager.start_kernel(path=kernel_path, kernel_name=kernel_name)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 735, in run
    value = future.result()
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\tornado\gen.py", line 209, in wrapper
    yielded = next(result)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\notebook\services\kernels\kernelmanager.py", line 168, in start_kernel
    super(MappingKernelManager, self).start_kernel(**kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_client\multikernelmanager.py", line 110, in start_kernel
    km.start_kernel(**kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_client\manager.py", line 240, in start_kernel
    self.write_connection_file()
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_client\connect.py", line 476, in write_connection_file
    kernel_name=self.kernel_name
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_client\connect.py", line 141, in write_connection_file
    with secure_write(fname) as f:
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\lib\contextlib.py", line 112, in __enter__
    return next(self.gen)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_core\paths.py", line 404, in secure_write
    win32_restrict_file_to_user(fname)
  File "C:\Users\lnavarro6\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\site-packages\jupyter_core\paths.py", line 359, in win32_restrict_file_to_user
    import win32api
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified procedure could not be found.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Comments: 27 (5 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

Most upvoted comments

Rumors abound there’s an installation glitch in the 225 build of pywin32. Have you tried conda install pywin32?

+91

kevin-bates on Oct 17, 2019

According to pywin32 github you must run

pip install pywin32

and after that, you must run

python [environment path]/Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install

After hours this worked for me!

+82

mcmah309 on Mar 19, 2020

Had the same issue and pip uninstall pywin32 and installing it again helped. conda install pywin32 didn’t work, however.

+58

ValentinVerschinin on Jan 24, 2020

Can confirm @ValentinVerschinin solution worked. Thanks for trouble shooting this several hours before me!

+11

JStuckner on Jan 24, 2020

Don’t know how you installed pywin32, but you may be missing the system files.

Try downloading a precompiled wheel from here: https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pywin32

And install pywin32 system files, cd into your PYTHONPATH, and run python.exe Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install from an elevated command prompt.

afvca on Oct 17, 2019

According to pywin32 github you must run
pip install pywin32
and after that, you must run
python [environment path]/Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install
After hours this worked for me!

İt worked too

eren-korkmaz on Jun 27, 2020

Too many successes - time to close! 😄

kevin-bates on Jul 8, 2020

Thanks @johann-petrak - your point is valid. Rather than re-open this issue, I would suggest a new issue be opened in jupyter_core which is responsible for the pywin32 requirement within the ecosystem.

Please reference your previous comment as to what the issue is. I suspect this will require some conda expertise if I’m understanding the recommendation.

Also, note that Terminal functionality is currently not working in Windows with Python 3.9+ (#5967).

kevin-bates on Jan 31, 2021

Why is this bug closed? According to this: https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/issues/1507 the problem arises because of the way how Jupyter bundles the library.

I just got this problem after installing jupyter into a brand now Miniconda installagion, creating a Python 3.9 environment for my packages (On Windows 10)

I think it is unacceptable for Windows users to run into the problem of the kernel not working in Jupyter, googling the problem, finding a closed issue, figuring out some installation/environment path on their computer, and then needing to type in a cryptic command in order to make things work for them.

This should get fixed properly.

johann-petrak on Jan 31, 2021

conda install pywin32 worked for me. I am using Python 3.8

vinodhmano on Dec 28, 2020

According to pywin32 github you must run
pip install pywin32
and after that, you must run
python [environment path]/Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install
After hours this worked for me!

It also worked for me. Cheers bro!

kbyokin on Jul 8, 2020

Faced the same issue and fixed it now.

Please follow these steps:

Install pywin32 using conda install pywin32, and
Uninstall pywin32 using pip uninstall pywin32

I think the issue is, pip pywin32 was conflicting with conda

mtachaudhary on May 24, 2021

Don’t know how you installed pywin32, but you may be missing the system files.

Try downloading a precompiled wheel from here: https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pywin32

And install pywin32 system files, cd into your PYTHONPATH, and run python.exe Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install from an elevated command prompt.

Just want to confirm that this solution did work for my conda environment.

For those unable to find Scripts folder or have no PYTHONPATH

This will likely require an elevated (administrator) prompt Once you activated your environment, a correct path to python.exe is prepended to your PATH variable. On Windows, you can locate executables found in PATH directories using the following command: where.exe python.exe Please note that if you run it from PowerShell, you have to explicitly type where.exe, as where will resolve to Where-Object, a different utility. You will get a list of all absolute paths to python.exe, select the first one, like:

C:\tools\miniconda3\envs\my_env\python.exe

cd to the folder containing python.exe by e.g. copy-pasting part of the path you got from running the previous command. From there you can run python.exe Scripts/pywin32_postinstall.py -install as-is.

Ilia-Kosenkov on May 11, 2021

FWIW, https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter_core/pull/230 replaces pywin32 with ctypes. No more win32api import errors and works on Python 3.10 and PyPy…

cgohlke on Aug 3, 2021

This issue is still valid for the latest version of Anaconda.

mjstenbe on May 5, 2021