Error loading extension

Max86Max86
in Windows VPN Setup
Hello !

I need your assistance with the following issue:

When I launch pia_manager.exe, I get an error message saying "Failed to load extension C:\Program Files\pia_manager\pia_tray_files. Manifest file is missing or unreadable". I started experiencing this a few days ago after a windows 10 update. I turned off both the firewall and the antivirus but that didn't resolve the issue.

Comments

  • Max86Max86
    edited October 2017

  • thegoosethegoose
    I'm having the same problem. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling but it didn't help.


  • brunisbrunis
    glad I am not the only one as I am also have this issue (Win7 Pro 64bit).  Please fix soon.
  • Max-PMax-P
    @brunis Have you tried doing a full reinstallation of the app? This error is usually because something deleted one or more files in that directory (in this situation, the manifest file).
  • p7609373p7609373
    My error notice appeared BECAUSE I did a full uninstall/reinstall! Going round in circles here guys ... need help fast!
  • Max-PMax-P
    @p7609373, @brunis and others: Can you guys attach a screenshot of what you have in C:\Program Files\pia_manager\pia_tray_files? There should be a package.json file in there which is the manifest the app is trying to find. If it's there it would mean something is preventing it from loading the file correctly... Usually antivirus software but it can be a lot of things.
  • p0177335p0177335
    I've had PIA for 10 months with no problems until now.  It wont load anymore.  I've tried all the different things from anti virus and extensions, but its been over a month now and I just wanted to know why a technician cannot just log onto my pc with the team viewer app, and fix the problem.  It looks like this wont happen, and I am probably going to lose 3 months of my annual fee, and will have to give bad reviews, and switch vpn services.
  • Max-PMax-P
    p0177335 said:
    I've had PIA for 10 months with no problems until now.  It wont load anymore.  I've tried all the different things from anti virus and extensions, but its been over a month now and I just wanted to know why a technician cannot just log onto my pc with the team viewer app, and fix the problem.  It looks like this wont happen, and I am probably going to lose 3 months of my annual fee, and will have to give bad reviews, and switch vpn services.
    This is a pretty common question I don't think I have seen clearly answered anywhere yet. There are many reasons why we don't want to do that:
    1. Letting a support agent remote into your computer, especially with something like TeamViewer, is the complete opposite of privacy. You'd be giving our agents complete administrator access to your computer and the entirety of your files. While we absolutely wouldn't abuse that position, we also don't want to have the capability.
    2. Apart from privacy issues, each computer has things specific things to it and we wouldn't want to end up in a situation where a customer is angry at us "because of the stuff we installed on their computer".
    3. If you don't know what we did to make it work, we'd have to do it for you everytime you run into the same issue, and if you have other problems down the line because of the changes you also would have no idea what we did, and neither would we do unless we recorded the whole session for tracking (which brings us back to point #1).
    4. As we're troubleshooting a VPN issue, a TeamViewer connection would be extremely unreliable. All it would take for us to lock ourselves out of your computer would be to start the VPN with a configuration that doesn't give Internet access: as soon as the VPN would start, the TeamViewer session would disconnect with no way for us to log back into your computer to undo it/finish the job!
    5. Some people would likely purposedly make a weird machine to make our agents waste their time while recording the actions of the agent to then publicly "demonstrate" our agent's "incompetence" with a situation they've never seen before.
    6. And finally, quite frankly, we don't quite have the time to do this with everyone with the volume of tickets we have.

    On top of that I wouldn't be surprised if there would also be legal issues if we did that, as our privacy policy currently doesn't cover remote desktop assistance.


    I'll be happy to help you troubleshoot this over here on the forum however! As much as I would like to give you an immediate solution however, we're still not quite sure why that even happens in the first place. My last reply to this topic asking for screenshots is a first step towards identifying what is causing this as it will tell me whether the file gets missing (which is a rather easy fix), or if the access is instead denied by external software which is a lot harder to work with, because the app is working properly and the file is there...

    I hope this clarifies the situation for you!
  • FlicFlic
    edited December 2017
    having similar issues since a recent windows update.  I don't have a pia_tray_files folder.  I've also done a search within C:\Program Files\pia_manager\   for anything with "package" in it and found nothing.  have tried uninstalling and reinstalling but still getting the error

    Update: had posted screenshots, but since the second uninstall / reinstall worked (see next post), they're no longer necessary

  • FlicFlic
    update: I did a second full uninstall/reinstall as per: https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/hc/en-us/articles/219498647-How-do-I-uninstall-reinstall-the-PIA-app-on-Windows-
    The second time it worked.  I'm no longer getting the error I and others had been getting before

  • imcalimcal
    Ive had this issue for the past few days - and have tried everything from uninstalling to reinstalling - installing openvpn etc.

    This morning i found a older version of pia - thought i would give that a try and hey presto installed and started with no issue.
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