docs-site/manual/platform/windows/startup-issues.mdx
If you start Anki and it fails to appear, without any error message, you can try the following:
When starting Anki, you may receive a message like the following:
These errors are usually because your computer is missing a Windows update or Windows library.
Please open Windows update, and ensure your system has all updates installed. If any needed to be installed, please restart your device after installing.
On Windows 7/8, you may need to manually install extra updates. Please try:
Please see display issues.
If you get a LoadLibrary failed with error 126, this may be caused by the toolkit Anki is built on having trouble with multiple displays.
Third-party software on your machine may prevent Anki from loading. You can try adding an exception for Anki, or temporarily disabling your antivirus/firewall to see if it helps.
Some users have reported that Anki did not run for them until they right-clicked on the Anki icon and chose "Run as administrator". Anki stores all of its data in your user folder, and should not need administrator privileges, but it's something you can try if you've exhausted other options.
If the update process leaves you with multiple Anki installs (such as within
C:\Program Files\Anki and C:\Program Files (x86)\Anki), they may be left in a
non-working state, and Anki may refuse to start without showing an error message.
Try uninstalling all copies of Anki from your computer. To do this, find them in Windows Settings > Apps & features (or Apps > Installed apps) and uninstall, or run uninstall.exe in each Anki program
folder. Afterward, install Anki again.
Starting Anki from a terminal may reveal a bit more information about some
errors. After installing the latest Anki version and ensuring all Windows
updates are installed, instead of running Anki directly, press the <kbd>Windows</kbd> key (or open the Start menu), type cmd, and launch Command Prompt. When the terminal window opens, paste the following command, and press <kbd>Enter</kbd>. (The path will be different if Anki is installed in a location that is not the default.)
%LocalAppData%\Programs\Anki\anki-console.bat
For Anki versions 25.07 to 25.09.x, paste
%LocalAppData%\Programs\Anki\anki-console.exe
Presumably Anki will fail to open like before, but the output in the terminal window may reveal something about what is causing the problem.
If you are unable to start Anki after trying the above workarounds, you have two remaining options: