Unable to start after Windows 11 upgrade

[MarkWest2017]

Hi All,
I upgraded Windows to 24H2 yesterday - and although I'm certain changedetection.io was working afterwards last night - it had stopped when I checked this morning.
I'm now seeing this when I try and start it - and I have no idea what this means, or where to start with trying to fix it.
Would greatly appreciate any help.
Thanks
Mark

---

Chromedriver started on port 50505
2025-11-10 09:51:12.911 | DEBUG | changedetectionio.content_fetchers::62 - Falling back to selenium as fetcher
2025-11-10 09:51:13.108 | DEBUG | changedetectionio.queue_handlers:init:53 - RecheckPriorityQueue initialized successfully
2025-11-10 09:51:13.109 | DEBUG | changedetectionio.queue_handlers:init:358 - NotificationQueue initialized successfully
2025-11-10 09:51:13.110 | INFO | changedetectionio.flask_app::90 - System locale default is ('en_GB', 'cp1252')
2025-11-10 09:51:13.127 | WARNING | changedetectionio.flask_app::94 - Unable to set locale ('en_GB', 'cp1252'), locale is not installed maybe?
2025-11-10 09:51:13.129 | SUCCESS | changedetectionio:main:131 - changedetection.io version 0.50.40 starting.
2025-11-10 09:51:13.131 | INFO | changedetectionio.store:reload_state:65 - Datastore path is 'C:\Users\mark\AppData\Roaming\changedetection.io'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Scripts\changedetection.py", line 8, in
changedetectionio.main()
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\site-packages\changedetectionio_init_.py", line 175, in main
datastore = store.ChangeDetectionStore(datastore_path=app_config['datastore_path'], version_tag=version)
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\site-packages\changedetectionio\store.py", line 61, in init
self.reload_state(datastore_path=datastore_path, include_default_watches=include_default_watches, version_tag=version_tag)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\site-packages\changedetectionio\store.py", line 83, in reload_state
from_disk = json.load(json_file)
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\json_init_.py", line 293, in load
return loads(fp.read(),
~~~~~~~^^
File "C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode
return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 1398: character maps to

[dgtlmoon]

#3611 at the top of the issue list.

in that #3611 is a temporary fix

[dgtlmoon]

0.50.41 should fix this and will be out in a few minutes https://github.com/dgtlmoon/changedetection.io/actions/runs/19229316171

@MarkWest2017 please let me know if 0.50.41 solves it

[MarkWest2017]

I've just updated to 0.50.42 - which looks like a rollback of your previous update? It's still broken in the same way.
I've been able to restore the config folder from a previous backup - which I'm assuming has no unmappable characters, as it works - but ideally I'd like to switch back to the current folder.
Thanks for your work and support :)

[dgtlmoon]

I've just updated to 0.50.42 - which looks like a rollback of your previous update? It's still broken in the same way.

yeah it is, i want to add some extra tests for testing that upgrades and restarts dont do something weird, but i'm totally out of time atm :(