Fixing Tableau Desktop Blue Screen or Unresponsive

Tableau desktop (10.2.2 on Windows 7 at work) was consistently locking up my computer or causing a BSOD when I tried to start it. After struggling for a while trying to solve the problem, I found out it was because it used all resources when opening the log file, which had over time grown to 24gig. Apparently my version of Tableau desktop doesn’t periodically clean up the log files.

However, if the …/Logs folder isn’t there at Tableau startup, it just builds a new one and starts fresh, so whenever Tableau isn’t running you can just delete it. So, to make that happen automatically, I’ve added a batch file with these commands to my startup folder:

  • cd C:\Users\%username%\Documents\My Tableau Repository
  • rmdir /S /Q logs

(/S makes the remove directory command recursive, and /Q suppresses the “Are you sure?” dialog. %username% is the environment variable containing your userid.)

To create the batch file, open notepad and paste in the two commands above (removing bullet characters and tabs if needed). In the Save As dialog, select all files from the “Save as type:” drop box, and save the file as rmlogs.bat (or whatever name you prefer with a .bat extension).

For those like me still in Windows 7, click on the start button at the lower left corner of your desktop, select All Programs, then right click and open the Startup folder. Move rmlogs.bat to the startup folder. Here’s how to change startup options in Windows 10, Tableau Mac users please comment if you’ve seen this issue.

Your logs folder will get cleaned up every time you log off and back on.

One thought on “Fixing Tableau Desktop Blue Screen or Unresponsive

  1. Bob Lambert Post author

    I also posted this on the Tableau Community, here: https://community.tableau.com/message/792339?et=watches.email.thread#792339, and received this reply there:
    Hi Robert,
    That’s a nice tip for older systems !
    However I would recommend this only if it’s your last resort. Log files are very important when troubleshooting issues.
    Without these logs, if you encounter an error we possibly would not be able to help.
    The best course of action here would be to remove the logs periodically and upgrade your hard drive.
    Ciaran

    I agree with that logs are critical and may provide useful history, but Tableau recommends deleting the log folder before recreating the issue when you open a trouble ticket with them, so on balance I’d just as soon clean them out. I understand the concern though.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *