Anki sync issues - please help ! [detailed post]

Anki Help
1

Hi Anki, I have spent a lot of time trying to fix this myself as I know you guys are busy but after trying everything I’d really appreciate your help on this.

Long story short I lost my main laptop and have had to make do with an older laptop. I have Anki on my iPhone which works fine, and can also use Anki web - I am trying to learn Chinese though and with the new laptop, am finding it impossible to sync my main Anki account with my reinstalled desktop version. My account has lots and lots of decks and I’m hoping to get these back on desktop so I can add more (doesn’t seem any other way to add pre-made decks to Anki except thru Anki desktop).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to install the newest version of Anki desktop on my new, older machine. So I have tried to install numerous older versions of Anki hoping they will work. Namely, versions anki-2.0.52, anki-2.1.15-, anki-2.1.46, anki-2.1.47, anki-2.1.49, anki-2-1-48, anki-2-1-40-64bit, anki-2-0-41.

A couple of these worked, I think 2.0.52 was the best luck - with the others I had error messages about

‘Load library failed with error 1114: A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed’.

Another error was
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “aqt\main.py”, line 210, in onRemProfile
File “aqt\profiles.py”, line 167, in remove
File “thirdparty\send2trash\plat_win.py”, line 56, in send2trash
WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: u’C:\Users\jstea\AppData\Roaming\Anki2\User 1

Lastly with version 2.0.52 it installed ok and I think the sync started to work - but then had an error message about there being a firewall / antivirus / VPN issue. So I disabled my VPN and antivirus, tried again, same problem, checked again, disabled my windows firewall, no luck; then uninstalled my antivirus, and kept firewall disabled, same problem - maybe something with ISP.

I’d really like to continue my language learning journey and hope this is enough information to get somewhere - happy to try any other recommendations if available, please get in touch.

Thanks,
jsteadman22

2

From your error message, it looks like you have a permission problem (you can’t write a certain file). Does this help?

3

Thanks for the suggestion BlackBeans I did tweak some user account permission things, bit wary about crashing my replacement laptop, still same issue with syncing (after disabling both Windows Defender firewall and my antivirus too)

‘Syncing failed:
Error establishing a secure connection. This is usually caused by antivirus, firewall or VPN software, or problems with your ISP’.

Should I unsintall my antivirus again ?? Wish it was easy!

4

2.0.52 is no longer able to sync. If later Anki versions are giving you a dll error, please try the qt5 and qt6 beta versions - how do they fare for you?

https://betas.ankiweb.net/

1 Like
5

thanks so much I’m back up and running, dae you are my saviour !!! Huge Anki fan (hated it at first, now can’t do without it!)

6

Hi sorry to repost about this, was going to make a new post but it seems relevant to the history of the issue - I managed to get all the new decks onto my Anki desktop (2.1.5.0 following the suggested link - think is the beta version), which was fine and sync’d to my Anki on my iOS which was also fine, but when I try to play the audio in the cards I get a ‘missing media file’ error.

I tried checking the database and media - on Anki desktop the check is fine for my new decks, but on my iPhone I have hundreds if not thousands of missing audio pieces. I have rebuilt the database and re-sync’d multiple times but issue still not solved. The audio parts of the cards are all included into my deck via my providers. What should I do? Is this about changing Anki profiles, re-importing all decks and trying again? Is there a shorter way? I have all the cards just missing the audio - not ‘essential’ but would be nice!!

7

Please make sure that ‘media sync complete’ is shown first on your computer, and then on your phone: Media files may take time to sync - Frequently Asked Questions

8

thanks for help all seems fine now !! if it helps anyone else, I had to

  • double check audio from new decks was on anki desktop (they were);
  • check if audios were on anki web from new decks (they weren’t);
  • reauthorise / log out and back into anki desktop;
  • ‘force sync’ all decks up to anki web;
  • double check audio files were on ankiweb after force syncing and reauthorising (success!);
  • then, (finally) ‘force sync’ back from anki web to my phone!

Helps to check media logs to see if sync actually happens, in which case maybe can try reauthorising anki desktop.

thanks again!

9

Force sync has no effect on media, so is not required. Simply syncing again, then waiting for it to show ‘media sync complete’ (restarting the sync if it gets interrupted) should be sufficient to solve most problems. Logging out and in again forces a rescan of the media, which may occasionally help.

1 Like