# Why does venv not work on my windows system?

**URL:** <https://discuss.python.org/t/why-does-venv-not-work-on-my-windows-system/11167>\
**Category:** Python Help\
**Tags:** help\
**Created:** [October 16, 2021, 8:03am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/why-does-venv-not-work-on-my-windows-system/11167 "2021-10-16T08:03:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ABLsaurusRex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@ABLsaurusRex](https://discuss.python.org/u/ABLsaurusRex)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2021, 8:03am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/why-does-venv-not-work-on-my-windows-system/11167/1 "2021-10-16T08:03:05Z")

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The docs say that python -m venv c:\path\to\myenv will do a lot; on my system it does nothing.

Could it be that it is confused by my almost empty 5TB drive? No, it doesn’t work on my much smaller primary drive, either. It doesn’t crash, doesn’t give any error messages or other kind of messages at all. It just appears to work and then doesn’t.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![steven.daprano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/steven.daprano/32/1083_2.png) [@steven.daprano](https://discuss.python.org/u/steven.daprano)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2021, 8:25am UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/why-does-venv-not-work-on-my-windows-system/11167/2 "2021-10-16T08:25:24Z")

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What behaviour are you expecting? What happens instead?

You say it “does nothing” but that seems unlikely. I’m not using  
Windows, so I suppose this is possibly a Windows issue, but this is what  
I get:

```
[steve ~]$ ls tmp/thing/
[steve ~]$ python3 -m venv tmp/thing/
[steve ~]$ ls tmp/thing/
bin include lib lib64 pyvenv.cfg

```

Notice that the venv command itself has no output.