Hi everyone,
I wanted to share (and hopefully resolve) a very stubborn issue I’ve been facing trying to install Scrivener for Windows 3.1.6 on Windows 11.
The installer consistently crashes before showing any UI, and I’ve been going through multiple rounds of testing to figure out what’s happening under the hood.
The symptom
When I run Scrivener-installer.exe, even as Administrator, it closes instantly or doesn’t even open.
Windows Event Viewer logs:
Event name: APPCRASH
Faulting application: Scrivener-installer.exe
Exception code: c0000005
Faulting module: <random .tmp file>
The dump points to InstallBuilder’s temporary .tmp module — which never fully loads.
What I’ve already tested
Antivirus / Security software
Disabled ESET and Malwarebytes (my main AV tools).
Still crashes immediately.
Permissions and ACLs
I discovered that my %TEMP% folder had an incorrect group assignment, breaking permission inheritance.
I repaired it so that both Owner and Group are now:
BUILTIN\Administrators
Even after that fix, the installer still doesn’t launch.
Clean TEMP directory / new environment
Tried launching from a new folder:
mkdir C:\TempInstall
$env:TEMP = “C:\TempInstall”
Start-Process -FilePath “Scrivener-installer.exe” -Verb RunAs
→ same crash.
Event Viewer correlation
At the exact time of the crash, I noticed SRUJet “Access denied” warnings (unrelated, but interesting).
Nothing else shows up that would point to malware or blocked processes.
ProcMon trace
Before crashing, InstallBuilder tries to create several .installbuilder_installer_* folders and hits thousands of BUFFER OVERFLOW / NAME NOT FOUND events in %TEMP%.
Then it dies with an access violation (c0000005).
What I suspect
At this point, I’m down to three possibilities:
The installer binary is corrupt or fails signature validation.
Some runtime (Visual C++ / DEP / SmartScreen policy) is breaking the stub.
There’s still a deeper permission or security context issue specific to my Windows profile.
System details
Windows 11 Pro 23H2
Admin privileges confirmed
System context (possible interference)
ESET Internet Security (active service)
Malwarebytes Premium (real-time)
RogueKiller RTP / Adlice Diag
GlassWire network monitor
Multiple ASUS background services (ProArt, Optimization, etc.)
AMD Software (overlay, noise suppression)
Paragon HFS+/APFS drivers
I’ve already tried running the installer after disabling some of these tools, I don’t know if any of them is injecting into the InstallBuilder process before it initializes.
No sandboxing / virtualization active
Previous Scrivener install on an older user account in the same system worked perfectly
What I’d like to know
Is there a way to run the installer with verbose logging (–debug or similar)?
Does Scrivener’s InstallBuilder stub depend on any Visual C++ redistributable that must be preinstalled?
Has anyone seen the installer crash before even creating its temporary folder?
I’ve attached all relevant details so far (event logs, ACL fixes, context).
Any insight or advanced logging switch I could try would be hugely appreciated — I’m determined to get Scrivener running again on this machine.
Thanks in advance!
—Edgar