If the SpiderOak One application is not launching when you want it to, begin by confirming that you are have the latest version of SpiderOak One installed and are running it on Windows 7 or later.
Ensure that your version of Windows is up to date with all security, bugfix, and other updates. Then reboot your computer. Several users have found that installing a pending Windows update and then rebooting the computer resolved the problem.
Add your current version of One to each of your security software's lists of approved applications. This would include firewall, any antivirus, and and any anti-malware. Do this even if you have previously done so or if One previously worked. Security applications often update themselves silently, and we have observed such updates blocking our software when it had been previously allowed. Another common case is that such software had allowed your previous version of One but does not recognize a newly updated version of One.
If you're connecting from work or another institution, don't forget about Windows group policies or upstream security devices that might be blocking One. Share this information with your workplace's IT staff.
Try each of the usual methods to launch ONE:
- Click on the icon in the system tray. If you do not see the SpiderOak One icon in the system tray, recall that Windows sometimes collapses the system tray, so you may have to click on an arrow to expand the tray and view all the icons.
- Select it from the start menu or start screen.
If none of those methods launch SpiderOak One, then open Windows' Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar, and then choosing Task Manager. If you are using Windows 8 or later, click the "More details" down arrow when Task Manager opens to switch to the advanced view. Open the Processes tab and kill any processes named SpiderOak.exe. Watch the Task Manager for a moment to confirm that you've killed them all and that they do not respawn. Then try again to launch the application from the start menu or start screen.
If the application still doesn't open, try launching it from a command prompt window. Those instructions mention that some commands need the command prompt to be opened as an administrator, but that doesn't apply here. SpiderOak One should always be run in a regular command prompt, never in an administrator's prompt.
Once you have a command prompt window open, enter the following command into the window (including the quote marks), then press enter:
"C:\Program Files\SpiderOakONE\SpiderOakONE.exe"
If you see an error message referring to "KeyError: 'L'", then the application is not finding one or more of your default folders Desktop, Documents, Favorites, Music, and/or Videos in C:\Users\WINDOWS-USERNAME. If you have deleted or moved any of them, then you will need to either restore them or install SpiderOak into a different Windows user account that has those folders in their default locations.
Create in Windows a new local Windows user. This needs to be a local account and not what is called a "Microsoft account" in order to avoid complications with Microsoft OneDrive. Log in to the new account. Go through all your security software, explicitly whitelisting SpiderOak One as described above. Launch SpiderOak One. Does it run?
If One still does not launch, then please contact us. Be sure to let us know your versions of Windows and One, what you have tried, and what error messages appear in the command prompt window and anywhere else. Please also mention the SpiderOak device name of the computer with the problem.
If you have any feedback on this article please let our support team know. Thanks!