Apparently the new Brave does not work with Windows 7 Home Premium

Running Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1, 64 bit, on a Lenovo G50 laptop, with an AMD A8-6410 APU. Got a notice a couple days ago that there was a Brave update available. I clicked the “Later” button, figuring I’d update just before I shut down. At some point I minimized the Brave window, and as I did, I noticed that the update was starting. I let it finish and install, and waited several minutes for the Install dialog box to close after it said it had completed. Clicking on the “Close” button did nothing, and clicking the “X” didn’t work either. I finally brought up the Task Manager and killed the box that way, then shut down my laptop for the night.

Next day, after I booted my laptop, I noticed that I had two Brave icons – apparently the new version installed itself in a different location and left the old version in place. When I clicked the icon in the taskbar, nothing seemed to happen. I waited a minute, then clicked the icon again. There seemed to be a window “frame” that emerged and disappeared into the icon whenever I clicked it, but no Brave splash page would appear.

I decided that something had gone wrong with the install and I needed to do it over, so I went to the control panel to uninstall. Brave Uninstall ran for several minutes, but didn’t seem to do anything. I used Task Manager to kill the uninstall process, then went to the file locations and manually deleted them, and the icons. I ended up deleting all the Brave files on my laptop, and emptying the Recycle box, which prevented me from going back to the old version.

I went through the entire download and install process again, but had exactly the same problem: no browser page would appear when clicking the icon, either from the task bar or the desktop. I came here and found I wasn’t the only one having difficulty with the new Brave on Windows 7.

Until the new version of Brave is fixed, I will go back to using Duck Duck Go, which works really well.

I have tried to download the old Brave Muon version from GitHub, but apparently I’m getting the wrong files and/or executables. Can someone tell me what I need to do? I liked that version and would love to have it back.

Very similar story. Running Windows 7 Home Premium on an HP laptop, except with an intel chip.

I tried downloading a few weeks ago (12/8), but had the same thing happen as the story above. After about 4 attempts and restarts I finally got the new brave version to uninstall.

Thankfully, I still had the old Brave .exe from last April in my downloads folder, so I simply reinstalled the old version (163MB). I figured the devo team would figure out that it’s not working on Windows 7, and I’d try again later.

Again, just a couple days ago I tried updating again. Same thing happened:

  1. I clicked the download button on the brave.com
  2. BraveBrowserSetup.exe is downloaded to my machine. I click to open
  3. The program goes through several phases automatically, including saying it’s downloading.
  4. The program says it’s finished. I see there are now 2 Brave icons on my desktop.
  5. When opening the new Brave version, the window is blank (completely white), and stays that way permanently.

@claymore I still have the old version .exe…

Wild gues is the Way Windows in previos versions refer to registry Shell folders and corresponding dll files. Totally revamped in modern os

Another topic on this is already open. Error on yesterday's update

Everyone affected is using Windows 7.

Yeah Boys and Girls, keep that old link to the older Brave or re-install the old one. I guess they didn’t test on windows 7 enterprise or home premium. Its broke two computers at work and two at home. I had to completely un-install on my parents computer with home premium. It wouldn’t do anything except use CPU and open a blank window.
I am using 0.26 Brave to post this. I don’t think I will un-install ( new)Brave as it may un-install the older version that still works good. annoying.
have a good one

Went back to GitHub a couple days after posting this and downloaded the .exe file for the old Muon version. Made sure to put it in the original folder pointed to by the icon (which I still had). It’s been working like a champ ever since then. When Brave opens to the splash page, there’s a box that tells me the upgraded version is already installed. I carefully click the ‘X’ to make it go away, so I don’t accidentally activate the new version.

I’ll keep using this version as long as possible. I assume I’ll have to switch to Windows 10 when I replace this laptop, and I’ll upgrade Brave at that point.

As @Lauren stated, this issue is known and we’re working on a solution. Windows 7 does not make it easy!
I am curious though - it seems like this only occurs when users attempt to update from the Muon build. I’m interested to see if the issues is with the online updater rather than Brave itself.

If anyone would like to test this out for me, visit our Github page and download the “standalone” installer for the release build (these are offline installers.) You’ll find them here:


Make sure you grab the appropriate installer for your machine:

Run the installer and see if Brave launches as intended.

Problem is identical. Clean uninstall of both Brave systems and still got the blank screen. I used BraveBrowserStandaloneSetup.exe rather than Setup32.

I think we should consolidate these topics into one. The previous topic that @Lauren started has a good amount of users who have already posted there (and will be notified when its updated) so I think we’ll close this one and move the discussion over there:

:point_up: Here it is again in case anyone missed it.

Duplicate:
Discussion moved to main thread: