GnuPG 2.4.8 / Kleopatra Hanging - gpg --list-keys and keyboxd Unresponsive on Windows Server

[niveditharao.kulkarni at gmail.com]

Hi,
Thank you       Alexander, for the response and helpful reply.
Your second suggestion was exactly the cause. We found that the socket
files in the GnuPG home dir were stale. S.keboxd in particular had a
last modified timestamp frozen on the day the failure began and was never
updated after that. We stopped all GnuPG processes and renamed those socket
files to .bak, which forced GnuPG to regenerate them on the next run.
Encryption started working immediately.

Thank you
Best regards
Nivedta

On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 6:35 PM Alexander Kulbartsch <
alexander.kulbartsch at gnupg.com> wrote:

> Hello Niveditha!
>
> From what you wrote in your detailed description I assume you
> installed Gpg4win 4.4.1. But for automation you use the gpg CLI
> tool.
>
> Since that version a few fixes to the keyboxd were made. So I
> recommend that you install a recent version. The current release
> is 5.0.2.
> (Don't mind the major release number change, the crypto is
> fully compatible with the previous versions.)
>
> If you are still on Windows Server 16, Gpg4win 4.4.1 was the
> latest supported version, because of a QT bug for old Windows
> versions. But you can use the recent CLI gpg version.
>
> Another idea:
> In case you started gpg with another user than usual one, the
> socket files might have wrong rights. Try to delete them here:
> %LOCALAPPDATA%\gnupg\S.*
>
> Hope that helps!
>
> Best regards
>        Alexander
>
>
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