Meteor's most basic ("todos") example doesn't work properly on my windows 7 - no reactivity

Question

I've been using meteorjs for quite a while now on linux. But when I installed using the relatively new windows installer, I saw that the most basic example doesn't work on properly on my computer - win7.

The example is at: https://www.meteor.com/try/4 which runs perfectly on my ububtu, but on my windows - I see that no information is inserted into the db and all changes I make (add new "tasks") are only local to that page, and other tabs I opened were also local, and there was no "reactivity" (no information was shared between different pages).

I tried to troubleshoot it in some ways:

1. I made sure that MONGO_URL is not set, and then I set MONGO_URL to another db, and saw that even though that db reported "connection accepted", the oplog nor the collection updated (tasks) have any new information.

2. Tried different kinds of browsers (chrome, firefox). Both are latest in version.

3. See no errors in chrome console.

I am assuming that all writes are made to minimongo, which doesn't pass them on.

Is this somehow a known issue? Any suggestions?

Answer 1

A few things you can try:

1. uninstall meteor & any separate instance of mongo (including cmd aliases). download a fresh copy & install. Create a new project in a new folder. If the DB had some weird bugged lock on it, this is sure to fix it.
2. download robomongo (or use meteor mongo) to insert a new doc & see if it sticks. If it does, you know mongo isn't the problem.
3. Check that autopublish and insecure are installed. If they are, when you complete step 2 you should see a new doc in the app. If you do, then the DB can communicate to the app, so the problem has to be with the client-side saving to DB. Try a meteor method instead of a direct insert. If you don't see a new doc, then the data from the DB can't reach your client, which means your firewall (yes, it can screw up localhost requests, too) is to blame. Turn it off, make sure ports 3000 & 3001 (mongo) are allowed full access & that it doesn't do anything wonky with websockets.