openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Windows: CLI commands hang for 30-90s after output completes (event loop not exiting) [1 participants]

Bug Description

On Windows 11, all openclaw CLI commands that go through the full initialization path hang for 30-90 seconds after all output has been printed, before the process finally exits. The actual command execution completes in under 1 second.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26300 (x64)
• OpenClaw: 2026.4.8 (9ece252)
• Node.js: v22.22.2 (via nvm4w)
• Shell: Git Bash / PowerShell / cmd.exe (all affected)

Reproduction

# Fast path (no delay):
openclaw --version          # ~1s ✅

# Full initialization path (hangs):
openclaw help               # ~89s ❌
openclaw gateway status --no-probe  # ~36s ❌
openclaw status             # ~50s ❌

Diagnosis

CPU profile shows near-zero CPU usage during hang

Ran with node --cpu-prof:

• CPU time: 42ms
• Wall-clock time: 34s
• 99.9% of the time is I/O wait, not CPU work

Output completes instantly, process hangs after

Timestamped every line of openclaw gateway status --no-probe output:

[552964ms] Service: Scheduled Task (registered)
[553014ms] File logs: \tmp\openclaw\openclaw-2026-04-08.log
[553066ms] Command: C:\nvm4w\nodejs\node.exe ...
...
[553662ms] Troubleshooting: https://docs.openclaw.ai/troubleshooting
-- all output printed within 800ms --
-- process then hangs for ~34 more seconds before exiting --

Spawning via Node.js spawn() exits immediately

When the same command is spawned as a child process with piped stdio, it exits in 3ms. The hang only occurs when running directly from a terminal.

Individual operations measured as fast

• schtasks /Query (full): ~1s
• schtasks /Query /TN "OpenClaw Gateway": ~100ms
• PowerShell Get-NetTCPConnection: ~1.2s
• netstat -ano -p tcp: ~74ms
• curl http://127.0.0.1:18789/: ~4ms
• Module loading: ~500ms

No network connections or zombie child processes

Checked during the hang period — no outbound connections from the openclaw PID, no zombie PowerShell/cmd child processes.

Root Cause Hypothesis

Something in the CLI initialization phase (likely plugin loading, config loading, or an uncleared timer/Promise) keeps the Node.js event loop alive for ~30s after the command completes. This appears to be Windows-specific.

Workaround

PowerShell profile wrapper with timeout:

function openclaw {
    $job = Start-Job -ScriptBlock { openclaw @args } -ArgumentList $args
    $completed = Wait-Job $job -Timeout 5
    if ($completed) { Receive-Job $job; Remove-Job $job -Force }
    else { Write-Host "[openclaw] Timed out" -ForegroundColor Yellow; Receive-Job $job 2>$null; Stop-Job $job; Remove-Job $job -Force }
}