Hi,
Anki began crashing on startup and doesn’t seem to be providing any error messages. The only thing that has changed is I am in China and using a VPN.
I’ve tried restarting, reinstalling and starting in safe mode but the issue persists. I’m using Windows 11.
Thank you for your help
For unexplained crashes, you should try everything on the Troubleshooting Checklist – even the things that you don’t think are relevant. For this, start with #2 safe mode [but don’t worry about updating to the current version quite yet].
If it keeps crashing, you can also run Anki from a command prompt to see if any errors are output when it crashes. Startup Issues - Anki Manual
This is what appears when following the Debugging Steps:
Starting Anki 26.09.2…
webview proxy use disabled
2026-09-17 18:01:15,660:INFO:aqt.mediasrv: Serving on [Link]
2026-09-17 18:01:17,349:WARNING:py.warnings: C:\Users\Dell\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\addons21\964531817\lib\webvtt\structures.py:5: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence ‘\d’
TIMESTAMP_PATTERN = re.compile(‘(\d+)?:?(\d{2}):(\d{2}).,’)
Starting main loop…
awesometts\gui\homescreen.py:61:night_mode() is deprecated: use theme_manager.night_mode
Press any key to continue . . .
C:\Users\Dell>
Please try this again, this time keeping the Shift key pressed down to start Anki in safe mode. (Doing so will prevent add-ons from running. We want to see what is happening without possible inteference from add-ons.)
thank you for your help. Anki crashes still with Shift key pressed down.
What is the output in the terminal when you start Anki from the command line, while running safe mode? Are there any messages printed after “Starting main loop…”? Or, is that where the Anki program exits/crashes?
You said that the only thing that changed was your move to China and use of VPN. And, I see you are currently using Anki 26.09.2. Does this mean that you installed Anki 26.09.2, used it successfully in your old location, and then moved to China (within the past 2 days), started using a VPN, and then the problem began?
This is the message printed:
Starting main loop…
awesometts\gui\homescreen.py:61:night_mode() is deprecated: use theme_manager.night_mode
I installed the latest version in my old location and then the problem began when I changed locations
You definitely aren’t opening in safe mode if an add-on is loading. Make sure you hold Shift down until you see the confirmation message that you’re in safe mode.
I think Astrill VPN was preventing Anki from opening, I followed the steps suggested on a different post and the issue seems to have resolved, thank you for your help
I’m glad that you were able to resolve your issue.
If you could please provide a link to the post containing the steps to fix the issue, it might help others with the same problem and would be greatly appreciated.
I get error messages when trying to post links but the thread is called “Astrill prevents Anki from starting”
Link for reference: Astrill prevents Anki from starting