Reinstall on Windows not working as expected.

[Ivvvor]

I decided to test the windows install from the freenet.exe link on the quickstart page. To prepare for this I uninstalled the service, manually deleted all Freenet folders and checked the registry startup command was gone. Then I restarted Windows.

Downloaded freenet.exe and started it up after going through the security filtering. The first issue I noticed was the terminal window that comes up is in front on the actual installer window so it's not clear what to do next. When I tried the install option things start off OK, but I eventually I get to a red message in the installer, 'Service installation failed: Error: Cannot initialize node without gateways'. I close the installer. Looking around I see the downloaded freenet.exe and fdev.exe binaries in the 'Local/Freenet/bin' folder, but nothing else. In the 'Local/The Freenet Project Inc/Freenet' folder I see the data folder and content, but nothing else.

I've had this issue with the gateways file and fresh config not being correctly written when a fresh node in run before, but could never work out why. Restarting the system usually fixed it and starting the node again would write out the expected default files. I had put this down to a weird Windows quirk, but maybe there is something deeper going on.

As a side note, when using the freenet.exe installer from a downloads folder I note it creates a folder called 'freenet.exe.WebView2' and never cleans it up.

When I ran the freenet.exe again, installation still failed with the same error. Trying to run the node without the installation also just quietly failed.

[github-actions]

🤖 Auto-labeled

Applied labels:

• T-bug (95% confidence)
• P-medium (80% confidence)
• A-developer-xp (90% confidence)
• S-needs-reproduction (80% confidence)

Reasoning: The report describes an installation failure on Windows (service install error 'Cannot initialize node without gateways'), missing/incorrectly written config files, UI/installer window issues, and leftover WebView2 folder — indicating a bug in the Windows installer/node initialization. It affects some users reinstalling but doesn't appear to block all users or releases, so P-medium. Fix likely requires moderate work across installer and startup logic, so E-medium. The problem is primarily an installer/developer-experience issue (A-developer-xp). Reproduction steps and more diagnostic logs are needed to isolate root cause, so S-needs-reproduction.

Previous labels: none

If these labels are incorrect, please update them. This helps improve the auto-labeling system.

[Ivvvor]

Upon further analysis with AI assistance it looks like the gateway issue is related to connection reset issues when the node is trying to download gateway configuration and keys from freenet.org.

[Ivvvor]

Further testing suggests a weird IPv6 issue was causing the connection resets. Now when I install, the installer gets as far as 'Starting Freenet...' and just hangs there, even though the tray app is working and the node is accessible. If I press the close button on the window the status bar rolls along a bit and then says 'Finishing installation...' and hangs again, with the window just not responding anymore.