Solved: TweetDeck Not Working on a New Computer

I use lots of tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite. With my old HP laptop, the desktop application version of TweetDeck always worked exactly as I hoped, but with new laptop, I’m not so lucky. Here’s what I experienced, what I tried, and what I eventually did as a reluctant solution.

7/24/2012 Update
There is a recent update to Tweetdeck. This appears to have solved this issue for some people, but has also appeared to create the issue for others. The article below may be slightly out of date. 

I installed the TweetDeck desktop application and entered my username and password. At first I thought everything was going fine when my columns all appeared just as they were on my old computer. Then I realized that only my Facebook columns were working. None of my Twitter columns ever populated with data. I tried sending a tweet from one of my accounts, but I was greeted with the no-so-helpful message: “Failed: Sending update to Twitter.”

I thought that maybe I just needed to delete and re-add my columns. So I deleted a column and went to re-add it. Doing so, I noticed that all of my Twitter accounts names were labeled “Unknown.” Further, when I went to add a new account, all I saw was a blank screen where I should have seen the screen to input my account’s login info.

Thus I embarked on my journey to figure this out. In the end, I’m moderately satisfied with the results, but here are the things I tried, based on scouring forums for solutions… It should be noted that my experience is based on a Windows 7 system. My apologies to the Mac users out there, but perhaps some of this may help you as well.

Ran the program as an administrator
I read a couple of different variants on this one. First, I read that the user account running TweetDeck needed to be an administrator. Mine already was. Second, I read that I needed to right-click the app, go into the properties->Compatibility and select “Run this program as an administrator.” Did it, and it still didn’t work. Next!

Make sure Flash is installed on your system
I was pretty sure that I had already installed Flash, but just to be safe, I went and installed again anyway. Still didn’t help.

Uninstall and Re-install TweetDeck
Since I had just installed it, this seemed like I was grasping at straws, but you never know. So I uninstalled TweetDeck, deleted the install file, and started over. After downloading and re-installing, I received the exact same errors.

Check the Firewall
I thought for sure this was the problem. It would make sense that TweetDeck was probably being blocked by my firewall settings, right? After tinkering around with settings, I eventually just turned my firewall off completely, and the same errors persisted.

Internet Security
Some have claimed that programs like Norton Internet Security might cause problems with the TweetDeck app. I never enabled it, so that isn’t the problem here.

Windows Update
Because my laptop is new, I thought I might need to update some crucial files that the TweetDeck application needed. After installing something like 38 updates and restarting, TweetDeck still didn’t work properly.

Install Chrome
Since the web-based version of Tweetdeck only works with the Chrome browser (on a PC), I thought maybe there was something in that browser that would help the desktop application work correctly. It didn’t.

Final Solution: Web-Based Chrome
My “solution” ended up being that I threw in the towel on the desktop application completely. Once I found that  running the web-based version of TweetDeck on Chrome was almost exactly the same experience as the desktop application – and it worked, I decided not to waste anymore time on the desktop application. I will probably still periodically check the desktop version of TweetDeck, after new versions or Windows updates, but the web-based Chrome solution at least puts me back in action. Perhaps by the time the desktop version ever gets fixed, I’ll be so used to the Chrome solution that I won’t care anymore. You can run the web-based version of TweetDeck at web.tweetdeck.com.

If you’re having the same issues, tweet us @wafflesatnoon for any solutions you may have found. And to you trolls out there, this isn’t meant to be a Hootsuite vs TweetDeck discussion. I use both on a daily basis and like both of them very much. I’m just trying to help out any TweetDeck users who may have encountered the same problem.

7/20/2012 Update
Tweetdeck has just released an update. It may be a good time to run Tweetdeck, install the update, and see if it works for you.

Good luck!