Anki crashes on Windows 11 ARM — Smart App Control blocks QtQml

[Katharina.251]

Hello,

Anki crashes during startup on my Microsoft Surface Laptop (7th Edition) with a Snapdragon X processor (ARM64), running Windows 11 Home 25H2 (build 26200.9550).

The crash dialog ends with:

ImportError: DLL load failed while importing QtQml:
“An application control policy has blocked this file.”

The traceback points to aqt/qt/qt6.py while importing QtQml. Windows Security shows that Smart App Control is On. I can’t check the Anki version because the app crashes on startup.

Could you please advise whether this is a known issue and how I can run Anki on this Windows ARM device without turning off Smart App Control globally?

I’ve attached screenshots of the error and the Smart App Control setting.

Thanks.

[Katharina.251]

[Danika_Dakika]

@Katharina.251

I can’t check the Anki version because the app crashes on startup.

I can see that the last version you synced with AnkiWeb was 26.09.3. Did this issue start immediately after you installed that? Did you download the ARM build of that version?

If you were upgrading from a non-Arm build, these steps might still help you –

Can't update to 26.09 - install failed to run - traceback error

See the suggested solutions above. But because this thread is getting long, I’ll summarize – Uninstall Anki through your Windows system. If anything is still at either of these program locations – Managing Files - Anki Manual – delete those folders. If you installed somewhere other than the default location, you can right-click on any shortcut to Anki and “Open file location” (which may be inside “Properties”). Your user data is stored separately from the program, so as long as you don’t del…