Windower Won't Launch? (Jan 2026)

Hi all

Heads up, ther was a dev->stable merge earlier today. I'm making a dev tracker post for it, but in the meantime:

some people are reporting that windower is stuck at launch, trying to update itself, launching again, failing, launching itself again... etc etc
or just crashing on launch

if it's happening to you, right click on the windower folder and check if it is set to Read-Only, and if it is, unset it (and all containing folders/files), then try again

We don't know why it's happening, but it has happened to half a dozen people already.

If that doesn't fix the issue, come to the Windower discord

I had this issue* today and, after a little digging, realised that Windows Defender also had a definitions update today. I excluded my Windower4 directory in my windows security settings, restarted, and tried again - Defender popped up and I had to allow Windower.exe to run. After that, all worked as usual.
Unsure if it is the cause or a coincidence, but thought it worth mentioning just in case.
Note: I am not a security expert, decide for yourselves if this is appropriate.

*Edit: In my case, the launcher splash screen would pop up and begin "downloading components", then the process would terminate, restart, and try again endlessly.