Other NVDA instances are running in the background and have not been killed.

[hwf1324]

This will prevent NVDA from being installed or updated.

Steps to reproduce

Currently, no stable way to reproduce has been found. Could it be related to restarting NVDA?

Actual behavior

There are other previous NVDA instances residing in the background. This process appears to be an empty process, with most resources essentially released. The process state is: Wait:Suspended

Expected behavior

The previous NVDA instance is successfully killed.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments

An error occurred when creating the crash dump, and even if successfully created, the file size is 0.

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source

install

NVDA version

Version: alpha-53001,2fa36585 (2026.1.0.53001)

Windows version

Windows 11 Version 24H2 (OS Build 26100.6725)

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue

Other information about your system

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors

Yes, same

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Uncertain

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

Yes

[gerald-hartig]

@hwf1324 The report mentions this might be related to restarting NVDA. Can you describe the exact sequence of actions you perform before you notice the zombie process? How are you restarting NVDA? (e.g. via the keyboard shortcut, from the Exit dialog, or due to an add-on update/crash?) Does this happen every time you restart/exit NVDA, or only occasionally? If occasionally, can you estimate how often (e.g., 1 in 10 times)? Given you are on a pre-release build of Windows 11 (24H2), have you experienced this issue on a stable release of Windows 10 or 11?

[hwf1324]

I'm not sure, usually I use the restart dialog to restart NVDA. But rarely, I quit NVDA first and then restart it.
This has also happened on Windows 10 Version 22H2 (OS Build 19045.6332).
This issue should not be a recent regression; it has occurred in much older versions.
This doesn't happen every time I restart; it's quite rare.

[titet11]

@gerald-hartig

The same thing has happened to me, usually when upgrading NVDA from 32-bit to 64-bit, or when uninstalling and reinstalling NVDA without restarting.

[michaelDCurran]

May be related or similar to #16784
Which process is staying around? nvda.exe or nvda_slave.exe?

[hwf1324]

May be related or similar to #16784
Which process is staying around? nvda.exe or nvda_slave.exe?

nvda.exe, and the presence of multiple zombie processes has been seen before. I'm not sure what the command line was for the previous process though? But yesterday's process command line flags were not -r but user log and config file paths.

[sevapopov2]

I am not sure about different processes and such technical details, but I also experience that NVDA 2025.3 can work slower and have issues with different windows after restarting it with Insert+q dialog or especially after updating/removing NVDA-addon through the addon store.