FME Desktop 2021.2 hangs on startup : loading transformers

I had a similar problem in 2018 as a result of switching licenses.

This is what Safe support recommended:

Could you try deleting the .dat files (local license file for the floating license) from C:\\ProgramData\\Safe Software\\FME\\Licenses ?

Maybe create a backup before doing it or wait for someone from Safe to respond.

Thanks caracadrian, I already tried that but it didn't help. During startup you see FME Desktop does a check of the license and then he starts to load the transformers. I thinhk it has something to do with user rights because with a domain account with elevated rights FME Desktop starts normal.

Are any of your paths in the Deafaults Paths pane (under FME Options) network shares or restricted access folders? You'd need to make sure the user can access those

No that isn't the case although it is not possible to check the settings when the software doesn't start up .

Hi @francis​,

Sorry to hear that you've run into this! I'm tracking another similar report right now. What build of 2021.2 are you using (it can be found in Help > About FME Workbench)? And is there any crash event that you can share from the Windows Event Viewer?

You mentioned that FME starts fine when run with a different domain account, are you able to to share what differences in permissions the account might have?

I'll be converting this question into a case for you for better tracking on our investigation, tracked internally as (FMEDESKTOP-12343), but I'll be sure to post back here when we've got a working resolution.

In the meantime if you're able to give FME 2022 a try, that'll help us narrow down whether a Qt upgrade helped or not. You can find the downloads page here: https://www.safe.com/support/downloads/#beta

Thanks Jovita,

I installed FME(R) 2021.2.2.0 (20220106 - Build 21806 - WIN64) but we had the same issue with version 2020.1.3 (32bit).

I didn't find any issues in the eventviewer related to this.

Meanwhile i can start up the software with the local administrator, a domain admin and my onw normal domain user. And i don't really know why suddenly it works with my normal user and local admin because earlier this wasn't the case. I deleted the files under C:\\ProgramData\\Safe Software\\FME\\Licenses\\ and nothing really happened right away. Maybe that helped.

But there is still one user that encounters the problem on this specific workstation. This user has no problems on other workstations with the software. So I think it's profile related. We will further investigate the problem and i keep you informed.

We discovered that the issue was profile related. As other users were able to use FME Desktop without problems on the same workstation. So we deleted the profile of the domain user and when he logged in a new fresh profile was created and that worked.

Thx everybody for the help!

Did the old profile by any chance have the User Folders moved to non standard locations? (Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Downloads)

Some software have issues with that.

I'm not 100% sure of this because old profile is gone now but i think not

Hi @francis​, sorry to hear that it came up again and I'm glad you were able to resolve it successfully! According to our development team, on 'loading transformers' in the Splash Screen, FME is trying to read files in the directories specified in the FME Options. Do you have any relevant directories in FME Options > Default Paths? Feel free to share a screenshot of the Default Paths dialog or email me directly on our previous case if you don't want to share it publicly.

During the hang, did FME hang forever or eventually resolve itself? Sometimes windows takes a long time to find out a directory doesn't exist.

Also curious if the specific user tried FME 2022 during their different version installs?