Support FAQs

Commander Not Opening or Showing Virus Warnings?

We’ve had a small number of users reach out after updating Commander, reporting that the software won’t open or that their system is showing virus warnings.

If that’s happening to you, don’t worry. This is a known and common situation, and in almost all cases it can be resolved quickly.

Why This Happens

Commander itself is safe, tested, and working correctly.

Every update is tested across multiple Windows versions before release, and thousands of users successfully install updates without issue.

What we’re seeing a lot right now is that after updating Commander, the IP address field at the top gets cleared. When that happens, the quickest fix is usually just re-entering your correct IP address and hitting connect. That alone resolves most cases straight away.

There are two common paths to fix this depending on your setup:

Option 1: Re-enter your IP address (fastest solution)

Open Commander

There are a number of reasons why your CNC controller may fail to connect to a WiFi network and as each network setup is unique, we can’t guarantee every setup will be appropriate.

We will list a few of the most common reasons here as well as ways to fix them.

Before attempting any of the troubleshooting or fixes listed here be sure to read the "Connecting to your Nighthawk" section of the Nighthawk user manual which explains in-depth how to choose a connection type as well as how to set it up.

We have been made aware of an issue affecting some Commander users where upon connecting to their Nighthawk after the latest Commander update a box pops up informing the user of a Web Portal Update from version 0.00 to 1.5. Rarely this update will fail with a warning message, or it may look like it has completed successfully.

When the user attempts to reconnect to their Nighthawk the update box pops up again with the same information prompting a Web Portal update and re-occurs every time a connection is made.

If you are have issues with Commander after an update the first thing to try is forcing Commander to re-download and apply the newest version which will override any potentially troublesome files which were downloaded with the update causing the issue.

This will not delete any of your custom files like buttons, macros, machine settings etc.

You can force Commander…