Unreal Engine 5.8.3 and 5.7.3 cannot be installed – stuck on Initializing

Development Programming & Scripting
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1

Hello,

we are experiencing an issue installing Unreal Engine on a Windows company PC.

Unreal Engine 5.8.3 was stuck on “Initializing” for several days and could not be cancelled. We then uninstalled and reinstalled the Epic Games Launcher.

After reinstalling the launcher, we tried installing Unreal Engine 5.8.3 again, but the installation failed. We also tried Unreal Engine 5.7.3, but that installation failed as well.

We have already tried the available troubleshooting steps from our side, including reinstalling the Epic Games Launcher and trying different Unreal Engine versions. Since multiple versions are affected, we suspect that the issue may be related to the Epic Games Launcher, the download process, or another issue outside our system.

Could you please help us identify the cause of this issue?

Thank you.

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Hello there @Arslan_Akhmad!

Since both UE versions are being affected by the issue, it sounds more like a local/install conflict. There could be remnants of the previous install attempts clogging process, as well as possible interactions with any security systems in your company. I would test the following:

  • Make sure the PC has no left over components from failed installs, by checking C:\ProgramData\Epic\EpicGamesLauncher\Data\Manifests and deleting any files related to UE

  • After that, do the same for the UE install folders, usually at C:\Program Files\Epic Games

  • If your company allows it, you could also look for related registry entries and clear those as well, at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Epic Games\Unreal Engine\Builds

  • Check your network, security, and permissions for any potential conflicts with the Epic Launcher, and UE itself, placing exceptions where needed

  • Last but not least, another common reason for an install getting stuck at “Initializing” is insufficient disk space, make sure there’s plenty of it

If the issue persists after that, please share the resulting logs from the failed process. They should be found at %LOCALAPPDATA%\EpicGamesLauncher\Saved\Logs\EpicGamesLauncher.log

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can confirm removing everything in the C:\ProgramData\Epic\EpicGamesLauncher\Data\Manifests folder (just zipped them to back them up first) allows the 5.8.3 update to complete. thanks for the tip…