Power BI Desktop instance not detected

When you launch Daxlate, the Welcome screen lists every running Power BI Desktop instance under Connect to a running model on the left. The list polls every 2.5 seconds. If your instance doesn’t appear after a few seconds:

Confirm Desktop is running with a model open #

Power BI Desktop only spins up its local Analysis Services instance once a report with a model is loaded. A bare Desktop window or the “Get data” wizard doesn’t start the AS instance, so there’s nothing for Daxlate to discover.

Open any .pbix and the instance should appear in the Welcome list within a few seconds.

Check the firewall #

Discovery scans local Analysis Services ports on the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). If a per-process firewall is configured to block loopback connections to specific processes, the discovery won’t see anything. Most enterprise firewalls allow loopback by default. If yours doesn’t, add an exception for Daxlate.exe.

Run as the same user #

Desktop’s AS instance binds to the Windows user that launched Desktop. If Desktop is running as one user and Daxlate as another (e.g. one of them was launched via “Run as administrator”), the listings won’t match and Daxlate sees nothing.

Close one of them and relaunch as the same user.

Open the file directly #

If discovery still isn’t working, you don’t have to wait. Open the model in file mode instead. Click Open file… (or Ctrl+O) on the Welcome screen and pick the .pbix or .pbit directly. File mode doesn’t require Desktop to be running.