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Ptah Documentation

Installation Issues

Windows

Section titled “Windows”

Symptom: Installer shows “Windows protected your PC” SmartScreen warning. Likely cause: SmartScreen has not seen enough downloads to trust the signed binary yet. Fix: Click More info → Run anyway. The signature is valid; SmartScreen reputation builds over time.

Symptom: Installer fails with 0x80070005 (access denied). Likely cause: Running from a write-protected location or a corporate policy blocking per-user installs. Fix: Download to your Downloads folder and run as a normal user. If corporate policy prevents per-user installs, ask IT to deploy the MSI variant.

Symptom: App launches but crashes immediately with a missing VCRUNTIME140.dll. Likely cause: Missing Visual C++ runtime. Fix: Install the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) from Microsoft.

macOS

Section titled “macOS”

Symptom: “Ptah is damaged and can’t be opened.” Likely cause: Quarantine attribute after downloading via a browser. Fix:

Terminal window
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Ptah.app

Then launch normally.

Symptom: App opens but the dock icon bounces and then disappears. Likely cause: Gatekeeper blocked an unsigned helper on first launch. Fix: Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway on the Ptah prompt. Relaunch.

Linux

Section titled “Linux”

Symptom: AppImage won’t run. Likely cause: Missing executable bit, or FUSE is not available. Fix:

Terminal window
chmod +x Ptah-*.AppImage
sudo apt install libfuse2     # Debian/Ubuntu
./Ptah-*.AppImage

Symptom: .deb install fails with unmet libnss3 or libatk1.0-0 dependencies. Likely cause: Minimal install without Electron runtime libs. Fix:

Terminal window
sudo apt install libnss3 libatk1.0-0 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libxkbcommon0 libgbm1

Updates

Section titled “Updates”

Symptom: “Update available” toast appears but the update never downloads. Likely cause: Release server unreachable (firewall or DNS). Fix: Check connectivity to https://releases.ptah.live. If blocked, download the installer manually from GitHub releases and run it over the existing install.

Symptom: Update downloads but reports “checksum mismatch.” Likely cause: Proxy rewrote the binary. Fix: Bypass the corporate proxy for releases.ptah.live, or download from GitHub releases directly.