The dreaded "Waiting for ZeroTier system service" on Windows Server 2019

[peetey897]

I’m experiencing the (already mentioned several times) “waiting for zerotier system service” error on my media server (Windows Server 2019) but none of the posted fixes I have been able to locate have resolved the problem. I have already:

-Reinstalled the software in a standard way
-Used Revo Uninstaller to uninstall and reinstall the program
-Stopped and restarted the system service and restarted the device several times
-Attempted the solution proposed here in another thread on this very forum, but inheritance was already enabled on the programdata folder and when I went to stop the service before uninstalling, it was already stopped. I did, however, follow those instructions as much as I could with all that in mind and it did no good.

This is the first time it’s being set up on this machine (I’ve just replaced my primary server), so the issue is occurring from a fresh install and not from an update. This is occurring on version 1.8.6.

[zt-grant]

So I’m first going to say I know next to nothing in the Windows Server world, have never run Windows Server, and wouldn’t know where to start. That said, is there anything in Windows preventing an application from making web requests to localhost on port 9993? Maybe windows firewall? Some other setting deep in the depths of windows server? That’s about all I can think of in this particular case as the UI tray app uses HTTP requests to talk to system service running in the background.

There is always the command line interface. Open up PowerShell or the trusty rusty CMD and you can use zerotier-cli join NETWORK_ID and all the other command line commands that are available on Mac, Linux, etc.

If zerotier-cli works, then i don’t know what to say about the UI, because the command line interface talks to the system service via HTTP requests as well. But at least you’ll have a way to manage zerotier. Just without the UI app like those of us running Linux for their daily drivers

[peetey897]

Thank you Grant!

For some reason it never occurred to me that there was a command line interface to use. I have gotten ZeroTier up and running in the CLI. It works without issue there, despite the error persisting for the GUI. I checked and it looks like ZeroTier has already created and enabled its own “Allow to/from any machine on port 9993” rules in the firewall (and the CLI worked) so I know it’s not that. It’s definitely what I would describe as a mystery, but with the CLI I was able to get it running so that’s all that really matters. Thanks so much for your help.