Power BI never opens

[Gino49]

Hi all,

I hope this is the right place to post this. I downloaded and installed Power BI and it placed the shortcut on my desktop. Double click to open or right click open as Administrator makes the screen blink and Power BI never opens nor does it show up in Task Manager. It's tough to assess Power BI's capabilities if it won't even open. Stuck with Tableau right now and was hoping to introduce Power BI to the team.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance!
Gene

[v-qiuyu-msft]

Hi @Gino49,

In your scenario, please try to to uninstall the Power BI Desktop and install the latest version 2.39.4526.362. Before install the Power BI Desktop, please check if your environment meet the minimum requirements to run desktop: Minimum requirements.

Also please check if the issue is related to previous versions of the Power BI Enterprise Gateway. Please refer to this article: Resolve Issues when Power BI Desktop will not launch.

If issue persist, please use Process Monitor to trace the log during the Power BI Desktop launch time and share with us.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[Gino49]

Thank you for the help! Unfortunately, the only way I was finally able to get PBI Desktop to work was to uninstall the x64 version and install the x86 version. Shame that the x64 version isn't functional.

Best wishes,
Gino

[v-qiuyu-msft]

@Gino49 Is your Windows operating system 86 bit or 64 bit?

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[Gino49]

64bit Win 8.1

[pjeremy]

@Gino49 (and @v-qiuyu-msft)

I looked through the forums, it seems you and I are not the only ones with application hangs in the 65 bit version. 

I regret upgrading to September update.

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Opening-Options-Hangs-Power-BI/m-p/79329/highlight/true#M330...

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Machine-hangs-when-opening-some-power-bi-reports/m-p/34461/h...

[v-qiuyu-msft]

@pjeremy@pjeremy We got many customers said Power BI Desktop 64 bit can't launch. And we already reported this issue, will update here if get any feedback. Your patience is greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[Gino49]

Many thanks, Qiuyun_Yu! Let's hope something gets done about it soon.

[v-qiuyu-msft]

@Gino49@pjeremy I got the feedback that we would want to test and capture the following.

    A. Confirm the cefbuild works

1. Download and run cefclient.exe from https://cefbuilds.com/#
2. Click on the tab "Branch 2526"
3. Download Test App version 3.2526.1362 (64-bit)
4. Extract the package using 7zip or similar
5. double click on cefclient.exe

If the application opens and shows that google.com webpage has rendered, then that should be fine.

 B. Enable desktop tracing to see if that gives more information

1. Start > Run > Type 'regedit'
2. Go to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Power BI Desktop"
3. Set TracingEnabled to 1
4. Set TracingLevel to 1f (before that, make sure Hexadecimal is selected in Base)
5. Reproduce the issue
6. Open the trace folder and send all contents for review:

Trace folder:  C:\Users\<User Profile>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Power BI Desktop\Traces

 C. Use VMMap to launch PBI Desktop and collect more information

1. Download VMMap from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/vmmap.aspx
2. Extract this to its own folder
3. Launch vmmap.exe
4. Select "Launch and trace a new process"
5. Click on the ellipsis (...) next to Application and navigate to the PBIDesktop.exe file.  Default location would be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Desktop\bin\PBIDesktop.exe
6. Click on File > Save As
7. Save this as the default MMP file
8. Zip the MMP file and collect that for analysis

Please troubleshoot follow steps above and share us the results.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[pjeremy]

Hi @v-qiuyu-msft

To confirm. I can get into PowerBI but when I open the Options and Settings then Power BI then hangs.

A. Cefclient runs successfully and displays Google as expected.

B. I set TracingEnabled to 1 and TracingLevel to 1f and tried multiple times but I get files of 0 size this maybe because I have to kill PowerBI because it hangs

In C:\Users\<myuser>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Power BI Desktop\Traces\Performance

I have files PBIDesktop.3292.2016-10-26T13-17-24-581391.log, PBIDesktop.6920.2016-10-26T13-11-12-024839.log, PBIDesktop.11736.2016-10-26T13-08-43-601359.log, PBIDesktop.12932.2016-10-26T13-19-39-999720.log

C. I ran PowerBi with VMMAP. Again I have to kill PowerBI when it hangs going to the Options and Settings.

    I tried saving before and after killing PowerBI and VMMAP hangs too it doesn't generate a MMP file.

    I tried the same with other applications on my PC and they generate a MMP file.

Not sure if that helps, please come back to me if you need something else.

[Vicky_Song]

@pjeremy, could you please share us the your log files: PBIDesktop.3292.2016-10-26T13-17-24-581391.log, PBIDesktop.6920.2016-10-26T13-11-12-024839.log, PBIDesktop.11736.2016-10-26T13-08-43-601359.log, PBIDesktop.12932.2016-10-26T13-19-39-999720.log? 

[pjeremy]

@Vicky_Song 

How do I send this to you securely?

FYI I tried to do the same with October update and still the same problem

[Gino49]

You know - thanks anyways. I tried. I really did. I spent 40 minutes waiting on that cefbuild to actually download and extract only to find that there is NO cefclient.exe in the extract. There's a cefclient.exe.manifest which proved fairly useless.

Look, I'm sure PBI might be a great product some day and I do truly appreciate people's efforts to fix MS' issues but I just don't have time to play around with solving MS problems. I simply want something that works.

So, thank you Qiuyun_Yu and pjeremy - I appreciate the efforts but I'm done with this PBI stuff until some day MS gets its act together.

Best wishes,

Gene

[Vicky_Song]

@Gino49, after you download and unzip the file, you can the cefclient.exe file in the Release folder (the file is not in the root folder in the folder you select to extract the files). 

I'm sorry for the Desktop issue you're facing, this issue was reported to the product team. We need to collect the log files from your side so we can figure out the root cause more quickly. Thanks for any info you can share with us. 

[pjeremy]

Sorry typo 64 bit....bad keyboard day!! :smileyhappy

[Gino49]

Well, so much for the 32 bit version. Now I find out Power BI (x86) can't talk to Office 64 bit. Good grief - sorry but I doubt at this point I can recommend Power BI - well, at least if I want to keep my job!!

Sorry MS - it looked promising, but if it doesn't work "out of the box" without a whole lot of twisting and turning, it's not going to fly here.

Best wishes all!