Samsung Magician 8 won't launch? Here's a simple fix

[ORLY]

Hello! So, I had that issue with Samsung Magician 8 not being able to run. Tried to find a fix for it, but using the --disable-gpu-sandbox or -no-sandbox launch options wouldn't help me with it, and there was no other fix suggested on the Internet.

It turns out Samsung Magician 8 requires the "LanmanServer" service enabled in order to run. If you have it on "Disabled" - Samsung Magician 8 won't start, you will just have cmd.exe, conhost.exe, powershell.exe and samsungmagician.exe constantly opening and closing in the background.

Samsung Magician 7 does not require that service, but Samsung Magician 8 does require it to work properly.

So there it is, hope that helps somebody.

 

[zyarra]

registered to say thanks
thanks!

 

[traderred]

That fixed it for me, but why does lanman server need to running?

 

[SPDIF]

This service is always on by default, it only happens when you disable services and have no idea what you are doing.
Microsoft even does not recommend this.

Apparently Magician uses this to to see if there are more SSD to detect in a network.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I sure don't see it

Looks like it's for file and printer sharing none of which I do so not sure wth magician needs it for
I sure don't let SM startup with windows and run in the background lol
I'll stick with the version I have thanks hehe

The Lanmanserver service is a Windows service that provides file sharing and printing services over a network. It is used to enable users to access files and printers on a network, as well as to provide access to shared folders and printers. It is generally considered to be safe and secure, but it is important to ensure that the service is properly configured and that all users have the appropriate permissions to access the resources they need. If you encounter errors with the Lanmanserver service, there are several steps you can take to troubleshoot the issue, including disabling and re-enabling the service, restarting the computer, and checking for any updates or malware.

 

[SPDIF]

Yep always disable Magician as automatic startup, it's not needed at all. No need to send your data every day to Samsung.
Also Disable this service if you do not need the migration option anymore. It stays in memory and starts up automatically, using memory and slowing down your PC for nothing.

And disable automatic startup for Magician;

 

[fuhry]

I found this thread whilst troubleshooting Samsung Magician today. The --no-sandbox option was NOT enough all on its own. I had to additionally use "--user-data-dir=C:\temp\SamMagic"

Likely explanation: Magician is an Electron app. Electron is basically the Google Chrome rendering engine (Blink) with deeper system integration. The first time you run any Electron app, it sets up a profile much like Chrome does. Lots of other apps use Electron: the Spotify Desktop app and Visual Studio Code are common ones.

None of those apps run with admin rights though. Magician does, and Electron does not seem to like spawning render processes with full admin privileges.

I discovered this workaround by launching Magician with "--enable-logging", which runs a console window alongside Magician itself printing out any errors that occur. Immediately I saw "render process launch-failed" in the logs, which eventually led to the --user-data-dir workaround. I did not have to create the C:\temp\SamMagic directory beforehand - Magician created it because C:\temp was globally-writable on my computer.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

The software is completely optional and it doesn't matter if you never use it.
On Linux and BSD, the health check is almost completely irrelevant.
EXT4 handles the access control levels much better than FAT and even more so than NTFS.
One point where EXT4 excels over even NTFS is on fragmentation.
It actively avoids fragmentation to the extent that even on mechanical HDD drives something like a defrag is nearly never needed.
On OpenBSD, I have had several occasions when my power suddenly went out while I was transferring files on OpenBSD.
But OpenBSD UFS could automatically repair itself without having any data loss.
Both FreeBSD and OpenBSD have very good filesystems compared to windows11.