Troubleshooting Quick Reference
Find the row that matches your symptom, try the one action, then decide whether the detail page is worth reading. Every row points to a troubleshooting article on this site, written against Clash for Windows 0.20.39.
Symptom table
| Symptom | Most likely cause | One action | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| The profile keeps spinning after pasting a subscription, list stays empty | URL was copied incompletely, or the subscription domain is blocked on your network | Copy the full URL again and hit Download; if it still fails, retry on a mobile hotspot | Subscription import |
| System proxy is on but pages still won't load | Port 7890 is held by another proxy client | Quit the other proxy app (tray icon included) and restart Clash | Pages won't load |
| Browser works, but the terminal and other apps have no connection | The app ignores the system proxy, or its traffic matches a DIRECT rule | Temporarily switch to Global to test — if it works, the rules are the cause | Rule vs global mode |
| TUN mode won't turn on, or turns on with no effect | Missing administrator rights; service mode not installed | Run as administrator and install service mode under General | TUN mode issues |
| Every latency test times out although pages load fine | Test URL blocked, system clock drift, or the nodes are genuinely down | Sync the system clock, change the test URL, then switch nodes | Latency tests time out |
| Domestic sites go through the proxy and everything slows down | Mode was switched to Global | Switch back to Rule on the Proxies page | Rule vs global mode |
| The tray icon is grey instead of the gold cat | The core never started, so no proxy is running | Go back to Home and check the System proxy switch | Pages won't load |
| No internet at all after uninstalling Clash | System proxy settings are still pointing at a closed port | Open the system LAN/proxy settings and clear the proxy server entry | Pages won't load |
Three baseline checks
Most "nothing works at all" cases end up being one of these three. Confirm them before working through the table:
- Ports are free. Clash uses 7890 (mixed port) and 9090 (external controller) by default. A leftover client from an earlier session can make the new instance fail silently — the switch looks on, but nothing is proxied.
- The system clock is accurate. VMess and Trojan are sensitive to clock drift; more than two minutes off breaks every handshake and looks exactly like dead nodes.
- The subscription itself is valid. Import the same URL on another device. That separates "this machine is misconfigured" from "the subscription or provider is the problem".
Grab the log before asking for help
On the Logs page, set the level to info, reproduce the failure once, and paste the last 20 lines. That is far more useful than "the internet doesn't work". context deadline exceeded usually means the node is unreachable; bind: address already in use means a port conflict.
Still stuck
Work through the full FAQ, or redo the setup with the tutorial. Both describe Clash for Windows itself and remain accurate — the app is discontinued, but the build you already have behaves exactly as documented.