Windows troubleshooting

Computers can be, and frequently are, persnickety. If you’re having problems with PhotoStructure or seeing error messages, you’re in the right place.

🩺 Health checks #

PhotoStructure runs health checks regularly.

If you open the About page (from the System Tray or the main navigation menu), you’ll see something like this:

If you don’t see all green checkmarks, the message should be self-explanatory. If the message is odd or confusing or doesn’t seem right, please hit the chat button, email [email protected], or ask for help on PhotoStructure’s Subreddit.

Unhealthy network shares? #

At the bottom of the About page is a list of volumes. If you turn off your NAS, or your network isn’t available, that can cause processes that try to access those volumes to get stuck.

If any volumes in the list are red, the volume is in a degraded or “unhealthy” state.

How to fix network shares on Windows #

If you’re on Windows, and you see errors in the About page, or PhotoStructure takes a while to launch, or synchronization slows down dramatically, try the following:

Step 1: Open “This PC”, by touching the Windows key, typing “This PC”, and hitting return.

Step 2: Scroll down to “Network locations.” If you have any icons in that section, they need to be green, like this:

If any of the icons look like this:

Remedy 1: Try double-clicking the icon to reconnect the drive.

Remedy 2: If that doesn’t fix it, right-click the icon, and click “Disconnect,” and reboot.

These unhealthy volumes can cause applets that PhotoStructure relies on to hang, sometimes indefinitely. PhotoStructure will properly timeout these requests, but only after tens of seconds.

Windows Firewall issues #

Seeing something like createServer: code listen permission denied?

This error may be due to Windows Defender Firewall preventing PhotoStructure from opening a network port for either:

• localhost:1807, which is used for service coordination, or
• localhost:1787, the web service port used for the web-based user interface.

Most importantly: don’t disable your firewall.

If you see this window:

then click Allow access. It’s best if you only enable PhotoStructure for Private networks, as those are trusted.

If you didn’t see this prompt, or you’re still seeing the error, continue reading.

Windows Firewall Troubleshooter #

The first and easiest thing to try is Microsoft’s Windows Firewall Troubleshooter. Like all software, ensure the website is from a domain that you trust (microsoft.com is OK), and run VirusTotal against the binary.

In general, try to run software as a non-Administrator. In this case, however, the troubleshooter may need to ask for elevated privileges.

The troubleshooter may ask you to re-enable services. If you’d previously disabled services like Remote Assistance, you can keep them off.

Reboot, and then try launching PhotoStructure again.

Manually configure the firewall #

If the problem persists, you’ll need to manually add a rule to allow PhotoStructure to accept inbound network traffic.

Step 1. Open the Windows Defender Firewall control panel by hitting the windows key, typing “firewall”, and selecting the control panel.

Note: We don’t want the app called “Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security”.

Step 2. Click Allow an app or feature through Windows Defender Firewall in the upper left.

Step 3. Click Change settings (if enabled)

Step 4. Click Allow another app..., then click Browse...

Step 5. Navigate to C:\Program Files\PhotoStructure\ and select PhotoStructure.exe. Click Open.

Step 6. Click Add, then click OK. Make sure the line that says PhotoStructure has a checkbox ticked for the Private network.

Step 7. Relaunch PhotoStructure, and the network error should be gone.

“PowerShell isn’t working correctly” #

If you’re on a Windows 10 machine, and see the following error:

This is due to PhotoStructure seeing unexpected output from PowerShell, which it uses to get volume information.

PhotoStructure uses the following command to verify the PowerShell environment is “sane”:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion | ConvertTo-Json

PhotoStructure expects to see something like

{
  "Major": 5,
  "Minor": 1,
  "Build": 19041,
  "Revision": 1,
  "MajorRevision": 0,
  "MinorRevision": 1
}

Typically, if you’re seeing this error, either you’ve manually edited your PowerShell profile, or you’ve installed other software on your computer that edited your profile (like Anaconda), and there are commands in your profile that put PowerShell into a bad/invalid state.

PowerShell has a lot of profile paths it looks at. This article from Microsoft may be informative. To list all profile paths, run:

$PROFILE | Format-List * -Force

Note that any or all of these paths may not exist. To open the current default, run

start $profile

If Notepad pops up, check for lines from software that you’ve uninstalled. Either delete or and comment out those lines, save the file, and then restart PhotoStructure.

If this fails with “start: This command cannot be run due to the error: The system cannot find the file specified,” this means you don’t currently have a profile. Sorry: you’ll need to send us logs.

Still have problems? #

If you’ve got to here and still have problems, please manually set your log level to debug, and email us your error, your OS, and your logs. We’ll look into it and help get things sorted for you.

If you’d rather not send us logs and would like to try to figure it out for yourself, run PhotoStructure for Servers, and run ./start.sh --verbose to see verbose diagnostic logging, and look for “error” and “warn” log messages.

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Hi! I’m Matthew, the author of PhotoStructure. I’m a dad, amateur photographer, and author of open source, adtech, fintech, and edtech software since the turn of the millennium. He/him. I am building a self-hosted, safe, and fast new home for all your photos and videos.
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