DuckDuckGo stopped working on Windows. Got it working again. Sharing for others

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This morning I was trying to start DuckDuckGo on my windows laptop, and a blank window would come up for maybe 5 seconds, then close down again. I tried restarting my laptop, but got the same results.

Was thinking I may have to deinstall and reinstall, but got it working by doing the following. However, in doing this I lost my data, so lost my recent bookmarks. But it is working again.

  1. Go to Add Remove Programs in Windows

  2. Find DuckDuckGo, and click the … menu on the right, and chose Advanced Options

  3. First I tried Terminate. But this did nothing.

  4. Then tried Repair. This ran and completed. Rebooted again. But still same problem. (But worth trying)

  5. Then tried Reset. This deletes the app, but then it would come up again. You then go through the setup like you just installed it.

So it is about the same as uninstalling and reinstalling, but a little bit less work.

2

Did the reset process delete your favorites?

3

Yep. Favorites were gone. It wasn’t too bad for me, as I had switched from Chrome a couple of years ago, and then when I went through the setup again, pulled in those bookmarks again. But lost any new ones I had added.