Power BI Desktop freezes 10 times a day

[PVO3]

Hi all,

I'll try to explain the issue I'm having. 

Power BI runs fine, until a random moment. Perhapse I change something in a visual or a measure, but then all my visuals start to refresh and in 90% of the time they don't recover at all and Power BI simply freezes. Sometimes I even have to do a hard reboot. The changes I'm making are very small.

I sometimes I have the idea it has something to do with IntelliSense and/or Microsoft Edge Webview2. Yesterday I was typing a DAX syntax and by pressing tab, it took the suggested function. Every single time I did this, Power BI desktop frooze. Also, sometimes it generates multiple Webview2 processen (screenshot). 

It's pretty much impossible to work at the moment. Using the most recent PBI December 2021 desktop update.

Is there a fix for this?

[Josh_Boj]

Same problem here.  Constantly freezing when connected to an online PBI dataset.  Very disruptive to production.  Please fix and push the update as soon as possible!

[nrodrigues]

Seriously, this is quite irresponsible of the Dev team to be leaving power users without an option for close to 3 months now, the issue first surfaced in the December update and was not identified until February. and when it was, there was no disclosure on the resolution nor a break fix was provided. How are we supposed to use a service so unreliable and ignorant of its core users? I raised the issue to support and ended up with a bunch of people who didn't understand what PowerBI service was and kept going on and on about webview, while i had isolated the issue to be with anything run off the service.. They sent me back to the link I sent them and told me to follow the steps from there.. (is that a joke? not to shame them here but i got some names, at best, they were ignorant, at worst, they just didn't care) Have used Tableau for years and something as fundamental as this would have resulted in a immediate rollback or some form of hands on support, not from a bunch of novice tech support.

This has been a big learning lesson not to rely on a larger BI provider and look for services that are provided by focussed solution providers than a Goliath called Microsoft (especially Given its priority now is to push needless "needless enhancements" and "fancy ways of doing things" without addressing the core stability of the platform.  I mean there are visualizations in there from 2016 that havent been updated and then there is "info river" .... why should a user pay for a premium service and have to pay to actually get some decent visualizations? Get Your priorities right POWERBI. @v-robertq-msft @rahulshevde 

[palombie]

your message reassures me! We are experiencing critical problems with PowerBI Desktop and Microsoft has been leading us on a wild goose chase for 2 months now. I sincerely believe that the PowerBI DEsktop interface has been poorly designed and that the difficulties to make it evolve are considerable. Only...Microsoft seems to prefer to evolve totally secondary features rather than to tackle the real performance problems of the graphical part.

[boosalis]

I feel sorry for the MS intern who deleted the restore points from November 2021. 

[palombie]

Microsoft's answer is simple: never use more than 10 visuals per tab. This is not a joke.

[jaap_olsthoorn]

I agree, this is quite pathetic. This is taking way too long, especially since they have the solution already. I bet they wanted to release an update but someone decided to push the update with the rest of the april 2022 release, making us wait even longer.

It's very frustrating, and poor form for MS. But we all know how much work it would be to move to Tableau or another competitor, so they know they can make us wait without consequences. 

[marcodea]

Same problem.

Power BI Desktop stop responding and I need to terminate the process.

[nrodrigues]

I think its about time the vendors were evaluated for their ability to support, Risk of failure, service offering. Tableau is clearly not a leader anymore and with the Salesforce tag on it, i believe the product has seen considerable dilution. What PowerBI did was destroy truly passionate vendors and providers in the BI space by offering PBI either free or throwaway prices. Price conscious firms who were on legacy SAP systems would have certainly found PBI a step up from a functionality point of view but for an enterprise, we all know PowerBI isnt the answer, everything supporting the enterprise is either a hack put together through the PowerPlatform in Haste. 

The way Microsoft is pushing powerbi down our throats is similar to the opportunist launch it did of Teams right at a time, "some security analysts" found a "security flaw" in ZOOM...

[nrodrigues]

For those with Admin abilities, try this as an option. Go back NOVEMBER 2021. Previous monthly updates to Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

[fraza]

Can confirm I have been having this problem for months now, long before using WebView2 and now also with Webview 2. 

Only happens when connected to a dataset. 

Completely random anything can cause the Desktop App to hang indefinitely with only ctrl alt del shutdown to get it back. 

It's almost guaranteed to happen if you do any action after leaving the Desktop app idle for 20 mins+. 

Only working around I have been using is importing the data or saving all time (after every action) and closing the file if leaving desk for more than a few mins. 

Working full time on Power Bi Desktop connected to a dataset I have been having between 1 and 20 hangs (unrecoverable) a day for at least 3-4 months now.