Postgres Windows post-install "The database cluster initialization failed" I've seen many solutions and have been working on this issue for hours now.

After installation the post-installation script fails with the message above.

This is a development installation of EnterpriseDB On Windows 10 Pro (German Edition with English language pack).


No user created
No service created
No initialization happened


What I read about and tried without success (I hope I don't forget anything, as far as I remember these are all (at least most) solutions I tried posts from up to 10 years ago):


Checked whole file system privileges up to root of C:\, I have no other drive - this is a dev laptop.
Installed different locales because I read there could be issues. I tried "default", "C", "US English"
COMSPEC and other ENVs are correct, no trailing semicolon or other disturbances.
postgres password is simple


The installation works perfectly on a different laptop.

What I observed:

This issue is caused by a failing objShell.Run call in the VBS script.

The call is simply not executed. No error message. It "looks like" objShell.Run is called, seems to fail somehow and the DoCmd function where it is called returns. I don't even get a return value from objShell.Run, it just jumps out of DoCmd, thats it.

The written batch file exists. The path variables in the VBS are correct. The log file created inside the batch file is not created therefore I think it is not called at all. But it is created when I prevent the batch file from being deleted and calling it manually from command line. I prefixed the objShell.Run with "cmd /c " which caused it to run "more" but kept on getting other errors.

Unfortunately after several reinstalls, tries, reboots and so on I don't have the logs anymore. But if it is required for problem solving I'd be happy to provide it tomorrow.

I need to say I am not familiar with VBS but that is how far I was able to debug it. I also tried /X /D but I think i need deprecated tools for debugging, do I?

I spent hours with this problem and I'll leave it for today but I'm in desperate need for help.

Thanks.

(edit 1) Added which binary distribution
There are two Windows binary packages available for download from the PostgreSQL site: one by BigSQL and one by EDB.

You don't tell us which one you tried, but my advice is to give up on the one that you are using and try the other one.