Troubleshooting InstantWP start up issues
InstantWP is normally very stable and rock-solid. An InstantWP installation will run for months without any problems. The software underneath InstantWP (QEMU, Alpine Linux) is very similar to the software used by various cloud web hosting providers.
However, for various reasons you will sometimes get problems when InstantWP starts up. As InstantWP is completely portable, it relies on a set of background services to be available so that it will work. If these services are blocked or not started correctly, then you may need to troubleshoot your problem.
The most important first thing is:
- DON'T PANIC: You just spent weeks working on a theme and now InstantWP won't start and you think you have lost all your work. This is very rare. Normally you can get InstantWP back up and running again.
- Take backups before any troubleshooting: As InstantWP is just a folder, take a copy of the InstantWP installation before troubleshooting, even if you think it is completely broken. It may save some tears later. Place it in a backup folder somewhere and leave it there.
- Take backups as you go: You should be backing up your code anyway as you make changes. There are dozens of backup plugins available. There is something for every budget, free or otherwise. You owe it to yourself to try a few and see what works for you. Most will work fine in InstantWP.
- Check your firewall and anti-virus (AV) software: InstantWP will launch various network services at startup and sometimes these will get blocked by over-zealous firewall and AV software. Try turning these off temporarily and see if InstantWP starts correctly again. If so, you may need to adjust the firewall / AV settings to allow InstantWP to work. Don't forget to turn the firewall and AV back on!
Here are some things you can try for specific issues...
The downloaded file has possibly been corrupted during the download. This happens sometimes. Just download it again.
- On Windows, start the Task Manager (right click on the Task Bar and choose Task Manager). Go to the Details tab and choose any processes starting with 'instantwp'. Select these tasks and click the End Task button.
- On macOS, start the Activity Monitor. Select any processes starting with 'instantwp' and click the Force Quit button on the menubar (the button with the X).
When you need to see the Linux Virtual Machine booting to diagnose an issue.
- On macOS, change the ShowQEMUWindow setting in the config file to 'yes' and restart IWP.
- On Windows, open the Start-InstantWP.bat in a text editor (Notepad is fine). Edit the line
start /min bin\HideQEMUWindow.exe &
and add REM to the beginning to be
REM start /min bin\HideQEMUWindow.exe &
This means Windows will ignore this line and the QEMU window will be shown.
Here are a few things you can try Normally the InstantWP Control Panel will start up fine and then when you open a web browser you will gate an error and 127.0.0.1 refused to connect error
