DROID stuck on loading screen

[kathaurielle]

Hello, I have a user who has more than one machine stuck on the DROID loading screen. Am going to write to them for more info now, but wonder if anyne has any immediate thoughts? I actually can't see this reported by anyone else.

[steve-daly]

I think we'd need a bit more to go on, e.g. what the DROID output window says and which versions are being used.

They could just delete or rename the .droid6 folder which is a normal way to deal with behaviour like this.

[kathaurielle]

Thanks Steve, have asked them to post here and will ask them to delete.

[kathaurielle]

Just fyi, have had another user report this.

[steve-daly]

Thanks @kathaurielle could you pass on that same advice above to this new user too.

[kathaurielle]

Yep- done!

[hparsons56]

I am the user that kathaurielle mentioned above. I'm the IT support person (contractor) for the George W Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, TX, part of the National Archives and Records Administration (USA). We have several users that are scheduled to have this system installed on their computers, and I'm tasked with installing it for them.

I'm not 100% clear on the installation process, but here's what I did.

I unzipped the download (droid-binary-6.8.1-bin-win64-with-jre) and after extracting I copied the files to a Droid folder on my desktop. I ran the droid.bat, and the computer displayed the above graphic indicating Droid was loading, but it never moved further.

I tried using task manager to kill the process, but couldn't identify what process was running. I then rebooted, partially to try again, and partially to kill any processes that may have been running. When I repeated the process, I got the same results.

I tried the same process on the root of the *c:* drive, and got the same results. I even tried extracting the files directly in my download folder without copying them to a Droid folder, and had the same results.

There is no .droid6 folder that I can find to delete.

Also, for clarity, users here do not have admin rights to the individual workstations (that includes me on my workstation, I have to use an alternate login for admin functions).

[sparkhi]

Hello @hparsons56
There is no need to share the log4j.properties file, that file governs the details to be logged. As you mentioned that the actual log file does not have anything other than "Starting Droid", my first suspicion is that the unzip operation, perhaps, did not unzip everything properly. Here's a screenshot of all the files within my Droid folder (Mine is v6.8.0, for you it will be 6.8.1)

A lot of jar files that are needed by Droid are inside the 'lib' folder, if any of the jar files are missing, Droid may not start properly.

As Droid operates as a GUI as well as Command line tool, here's something that you can try and let me know the outcome

• Open command prompt
• Navigate to the folder where you have unzipped Droid (e.g. C:\Droid)
• On the command prompt, run the command droid -v (I expect an output showing version number 6.8.1)
• If this succeeds, please run the command droid (this should launch the GUI - which has been a problem for you) If this still stays stuck, please let us know

When Droid starts up, it checks for latest signature database, if there are restrictions on the internet traffic, it might keep attempting until it times out, then proceed to load the application. In this situation, it will appear to be slow in initialising but it should eventually start up.
If this is the case, one option is to stop droid from checking new signatures, this can be done through the preferences dialog, however as the GUI is not starting, you could alter this setting manually using following steps

• open the file c:\Users\<your user name>\.droid6\droid.properties in notepad
• change the line which says update.autoCheck = true to update.autoCheck = false
• save and close the file
• Launch Droid using the droid.bat file

Hope this helps,

[hparsons56]

I contacted the person that has requested this install for my site (she is at NARA's College Park headquarters), and this is the email I received back from her. Bottom line is the new version doesn't work on our computers, an older version does.

I've downloaded and tried the older version, and it works; so we'll run with that. At my site, this is being installed for a short term training session, and apparently, the trainers are going to use the older version as well.

=====
Hi Herb,

Sorry about this issue, it didn't come up when we tested it before but it does look like there may be an issue with 6.8.1 and Windows Defender.

This is from my director, who tested it just now:

The 6.8.1 version that was installed on my new laptop also does not work.
What I could get to work was 6.7.0 with NO embedded JRE: https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/releases/download/droid-6.7.0/droid-binary-6.7.0-bin.zip
These files can be extracted and copied to a directory on the machine and run from there with no installer needed.

So can you try installing 6.7.0 with no embedded JRE and let us know how that goes?

[steve-daly]

Thanks @hparsons56 It might be that the difference between these two versions being tested is that the v6.7.0 is being used without the supplied JRE (i.e. relying on the Java installed on the PC already) whereas the 6.8.1 version will be trying to use Java from within the downloaded directory and there may be some security restrictions applying to this.

You could try the equivalent non-JRE version of 6.8.1 here https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/releases/download/droid-6.8.1/droid-binary-6.8.1-bin.zip and see if that works OK.

[hparsons56]

That also did not work. I noticed that I had to unblock the .bat file in Windows, so I suspect that there is probably something security related blocking it.

[steve-daly]

Thanks @hparsons56 so to confirm, if you download this version..

https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/releases/download/droid-6.7.0/droid-binary-6.7.0-bin.zip

...it works for you, but if you download this version...

https://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/releases/download/droid-6.8.1/droid-binary-6.8.1-bin.zip

it doesn't? Is that right?

[steve-daly]

Hi @hparsons56 we're interested in whether you are seeing issues with the later Java. Would you have a moment to check my most recent question above and we could investigate further.

[vivadavid]

Hi,

I don't know if it's related, but version 6.9.0 didn't work for me and neither does version 6.9.1. It says 'A Java exception has occurred'.

Previous to 6.9.0, things were fine.

[sparkhi]

Hi @vivadavid

• Could you please let us know the operating system you are using?
• If you are using Windows, could you please also let us know if you used the Droid version with embedded JRE (droid-binary-6.9.1-bin-win64-with-jre.zip) or the one that uses Java from your machine (droid-binary-6.9.1-bin.zip) ?
• Please go to the Droid logs folder (typically, C:\Users\<your user name>\.droid6\logs on Windows or <your home folder>/.droid6/logs), inside, there would be a file called droid.log, please share the contents of that file, it may have more details than just the exception message.

Thanks

[vivadavid]

Hi, @sparkhi ,

• I'm on Windows 11 (24H2).

• I've tested both versions (with or without JRE). I've just tested version 6.9.2, but the problem persists. I have the latest Java version (version 8, update 451).

• LOG:
  2025-06-01T11:46:28,780 INFO [AWT-EventQueue-0] DroidMainFrame:288 - Starting DROID.
  2025-06-01T11:46:33,239 INFO [AWT-EventQueue-0] ProfileManagerImpl:129 - Creating profile: 1748771193238
  2025-06-01T11:46:33,363 INFO [SwingWorker-pool-4-thread-1] ProfileManagerImpl:222 - Opening profile: 1748771193238
  2025-06-01T11:46:37,638 INFO [SwingWorker-pool-4-thread-1] ProfileDiskAction:87 - Saving profile [C:\Users<username>.droid6\profiles\1748771193238\db] to [C:\Users<username>.droid6\profile_templates\schema 6.7.0\profile.120.template]
  2025-06-01T11:46:37,827 INFO [AWT-EventQueue-0] ProfileInstance:365 - Attempting state change [INITIALISING] to [VIRGIN]
  2025-06-01T11:49:57,392 INFO [AWT-EventQueue-0] ProfileManagerImpl:206 - Closing profile: 1748771193238
  2025-06-01T11:49:57,476 INFO [AWT-EventQueue-0] DroidMainFrame:1541 - Closing DROID.