# Windows - Headscale
An open source, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server.
Author: Headscale authors

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# Connecting a Windows client

This documentation has the goal of showing how a user can use the official Windows Tailscale client with headscale.

Instructions on your headscale instance

An endpoint with information on how to connect your Windows device is also available at `/windows` on your running instance.

## Installation

Download the Official Windows Client and install it.

## Configuring the headscale URL

Open a Command Prompt or Powershell and use Tailscale's login command to connect with your headscale instance (e.g `https://headscale.example.com`):

    tailscale login --login-server <YOUR_HEADSCALE_URL>

Follow the instructions in the opened browser window to finish the configuration.

## Troubleshooting

### Unattended mode

By default, Tailscale's Windows client is only running when the user is logged in. If you want to keep Tailscale running all the time, please enable "Unattended mode":

- Click on the Tailscale tray icon and select `Preferences`
- Enable `Run unattended`
- Confirm the "Unattended mode" message

See also Keep Tailscale running when I'm not logged in to my computer

### Failing node registration

If you are seeing repeated messages like:

    [GIN] 2022/02/10 - 16:39:34 | 200 |    1.105306ms |       127.0.0.1 | POST     "/machine/redacted"

in your headscale output, turn on `DEBUG` logging and look for:

    2022-02-11T00:59:29Z DBG Machine registration has expired. Sending a authurl to register machine=redacted

This typically means that the registry keys above was not set appropriately.

To reset and try again, it is important to do the following:

1. Shut down the Tailscale service (or the client running in the tray)
2. Delete Tailscale Application data folder, located at `C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\Tailscale` and try to connect again.
3. Ensure the Windows node is deleted from headscale (to ensure fresh setup)
4. Start Tailscale on the Windows machine and retry the login.