For Windows version of TBM, it is required to use some local port. Since Essential version is web application packed into exe file, it uses browser engine internally to display pages. Internally, these pages have the following format:

http://localhost:port/PageName

For example

http://localhost:8733/Dashboard

This port is used to identify application channel in memory. For example, to connect Trados Studio with TBM, you have to specify URL of the TBM host. Because of this, TBM should always use the same port, and it is not possible to pickup random free port upon each application start. Based on this, the following default port was chosen for TBM Essential: 8733.

There is probability that this port will be used by other application running on your computer. In this case TBM will fail to start. You will see an error and blank screen. You can check error contents by pressing F12 and switching to the Console tab. If error message says about unavailable port, you can try to change it.

Please follow this procedure to change default port:

1. Navigate to the application installation folder, open resources\bin folder, and open appsettings_global.json file using any text editor.
2. Find DesktopPort parameter and set custom value.
3. Save file.
4. Start TBM Essential. You will see blank screen.
5. Close the application (right click in task bar and select Close).
6. Start the application again. Now it will work. Due to existing platform limitation, we can't make it working with 1 launch. Two launches are required to apply changes.
7. After installing next update, you will see blank screen again upon first launch after installing an update. Please close the application and start it again.

Because of this requirement to start the application two times, it is highly recommended to find a way to free default port, as mentioned above.