Zotero 7.0.19 failed to start GUI

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: Zotero not starting after update to 7.0.16/7.0.18 on Windows/Linux.
  • middleton2024
    The new release 7.0.19 did the opposite for my system (Windows 10 Pro 22H2 build 19045.6036); after the upgrade, Zotero failed to start its GUI. It only ran as a Windows process.

    Re-installation did not help (after killing the process), so I had to downgrade to 7.0.16 and all works fine again.

    This is the first time I experienced any issue with Zotero and I work with it on a daily basis.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Can you reproduce this after upgrading again?

    If so, see Reporting Startup Errors for what we'll need to debug this. If the debug output window doesn't appear either, see Logging to a Terminal Window and copy or take a screenshot of the console window when it freezes.
  • SimonCUI
    me too
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    We can’t help without more info.
  • middleton2024
    Thanks @dstillman, I will look into this and will get back to you when successful.

    NB: I start Zotero with profiles to add different libraries from different storage locations I created.
  • middleton2024
    edited June 27, 2025
    Debugging mode with error logging was not successful. Zotero hangs and will not write to the console window or fails to create a zotero-debug.txt.

    After installing the upgrade today, Zotero did start with a GUI, but it failed to open tabs and hung. I downgraded Zotero and closed all tabs and upgraded again. This time, Zotero started without a GUI (as a background process in Windows). I was unable to capture any error logs.

    For now, I am back to version 7.0.16.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    As the page says, on Windows, you may need to include -console along with -ZoteroDebugText on the command line. There's no way you'd get a GUI (functioning or not) without some debug output.
  • middleton2024
    @dstillman, I used the command 'C:\Program Files\Zotero> .\zotero.exe -console -ZoteroDebugText > zotero-debug.txt', but the debug file is empty.

    After two failed attempts, the GUI started up and hung again, but clicking into the GUI caused Zotero to start. There was an error in Help > Report errors.. which I sent, but forgot to capture the error ID, my bad. There were a number of Javascript errors reported.

    To see if the same issue would happen again I downgraded to 7.0.16 and upgraded to 7.0.19. There was this error ID: 1849538476 right after the upgrade.

    However, the problems of: no-GUI at startup or a GUI hang, did not re-occur. Zotero seems to work properly (so far).

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