When Teams is installed, the Teams installer logs the sequence of events to %LocalAppData%\SquirrelTemp\SquirrelSetup.log. The first thing to look for is an error message or a call stack near the end of the log. Note that call stacks at the beginning of the log may not mean that an installation issue exists. It can be easier to compare your log against the log from a successful installation (even on another machine) to see what's expected.
If SquirrelSetup.log doesn't indicate the cause or if you need more information to troubleshoot the issue, see Collect and analyze application and system logs.
When Teams is successfully installed, the log location switches from %LocalAppData%\SquirrelTemp to %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams. At this location, there are two log files of interest, SquirrelSetup.log and logs.txt.
These log files contain personally identifiable information (PII) and so they're not sent to Microsoft.
Teams can automatically start the update process (depending on the policy) or users can manually check for updates by going to their profile picture > Check for updates. Both methods use the following sequence of events.
If SquirrelTemp.log or Logs.txt don't contain sufficient information to determine the underlying cause and you need more information to troubleshoot the issue, go to Collect and analyze application and system logs.
This section describes how to collect and analyze application and system logs to get more comprehensive information to troubleshoot the issue. You'll use Sysinternals tools to complete these steps. To learn more, see Windows Sysinternals.
Download the Sysinternals tools.
Extract the zip file to the %TEMP% folder on your local drive.
Open an elevated command prompt, and then do the following:
Run the following to go to your TEMP folder:
cd /d %TEMP%
Copy the setup and application logs. Note that depending on the point of failure, some of these logs may not be present.
copy %LocalAppData%\SquirrelTemp\SquirrelSetup.log SquirrelSetup.log
copy %AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\logs.txt logs.txt
copy %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams\SquirrelSetup.log SquirrelSetup_Teams.log
Run the following to capture the open handles.
handle > handles.txt
Run the following to capture the opened DLLs.
listdlls -v Teams > dlls.txt
Run the following to capture the drivers that are running.
driverquery /v > driverquery.txt
Run the following to capture the access control lists (ACLs) of the Teams folder.
icacls %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams /save icacls.txt /T
A failed update can result in unpredictable app behavior. For example, users may be unable to exit Teams, have a stale version of Teams, or can't start Teams. If you experience an issue during an update, the first place to look to find the cause is SquirrelTemp.log. Here are the different types of update failures, listed from most common to least common, and how to analyze and troubleshoot them using logs.
As Teams determines that it needs to update itself to a newer version, it downloads and stages the new app, and then waits for an opportunity to restart itself the next time the machine is idle. A common issue during this process is when another process or a file system driver locks up the Teams.exe process, which prevents Teams.exe from exiting. As a result, the Teams app can't be replaced by the newly-downloaded and staged app.
Troubleshooting tips:
procdump -mk <pid>, where is the process ID obtained from Task Manager. You can also inspect the Driverquery.txt log file to see the active filter drivers that may interfere with Teams.Teams creates a number of subfolders and files in the user's profile throughout the installation and update process. Because the app and the updater runs as a non-elevated user, read and write permissions must be granted on the following folders:
If Teams is denied access because it can't write to a file, another software application may be interfering or a security descriptor entry may be limiting write access to a folder.
Troubleshooting tips:
In some cases, encryption software can change files in the %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams folder, which can prevent Teams from starting. This can happen at any time, even when the app isn't being updated. Unfortunately, when a file is corrupted, the only way to recover from this state is to uninstall and re-install Teams.
Note
If you can't determine the underlying cause of the issue by using any of these steps, you may want to try a Process Monitor session. Process Monitor is a Sysinternals tool that records access to the registry and file system.