I recently installed Docker Desktop on my Windows 11 machine. After the initial installation, it started up automatically, and I was able to pull some images with everything working perfectly. However, whenever I close Docker Desktop and try to restart it, it fails to launch.
The only way I can get it working again is by uninstalling and reinstalling, but the issue repeats each time—Docker Desktop only starts up properly after the first installation and fails to launch after closing.
Has anyone else experienced this? Any tips on troubleshooting or resolving the issue would be greatly appreciated!
I found the issue. When you click on the desktop link for Docker Desktop, a new Docker Desktop and Docker Desktop Backend process is started and you see the app. When the app is closed, the Docker Desktop Backend process is not terminating.
Restart finds the old Docker Desktop Backend process, which sends Docker Desktop to the background. In Windows Task Manager you will find these two processes running in the background; if you click on the Docker Desktop shortcut, those background processes will increment. Do this five times and you’ll five background processes for each Desktop and Background.
Assuming you’ve signed out of Desktop to restart Docker Desktop, open a Windows task manager session and kill all Docker Desktop/Docker Desktop Background processes. If you have terminated them, then clicking on the short cut works.
Desktop will not re-launch if there are any background processes running.