Browser is Unreachable exception while trying to test with Selenium Webdriver using IEDriver

Question

I have a set of automations that work perfectly in both Firefox and Chrome, and I'd like to launch an instance of IEDriver as well.

Even though the code works perfectly on both Firefox & Chrome, for some reason, I can't launch it via IE as it just times out. The code to launch it (the last line throws the exception):

        File ieDriver = new File("C:/Users/whatever/path/IEDriverServer.exe");
        System.setProperty("webdriver.ie.driver", ieDriver.getAbsolutePath());
        WebDriver ie = new InternetExplorerDriver();

And the exception is:

Exception in thread "main" org.openqa.selenium.remote.UnreachableBrowserException: Could not start a new session. Possible causes are invalid address of the remote server or browser start-up failure.
Build info: version: '2.33.0', revision: '4ecaf82108b2a6cc6f006aae81961236eba93358', time: '2013-05-22 12:00:17'
System info: os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.7.0_21'
Driver info: driver.version: InternetExplorerDriver
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:548)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:216)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.startSession(RemoteWebDriver.java:201)
    at org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver.run(InternetExplorerDriver.java:184)
    at org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver.<init>(InternetExplorerDriver.java:174)
    at org.openqa.selenium.ie.InternetExplorerDriver.<init>(InternetExplorerDriver.java:143)
    at uk.co.know.kiteTest.WebDriverManager.<init>(WebDriverManager.java:52)
    at uk.co.know.kiteTest.RunAutomations.main(RunAutomations.java:13)
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Timed out waiting for driver server to start.
Build info: version: '2.33.0', revision: '4ecaf82108b2a6cc6f006aae81961236eba93358', time: '2013-05-22 12:00:17'
System info: os.name: 'Windows 7', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '6.1', java.version: '1.7.0_21'
Driver info: driver.version: InternetExplorerDriver
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverService.start(DriverService.java:165)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverCommandExecutor.execute(DriverCommandExecutor.java:62)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:527)
    ... 7 more
Caused by: org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker$TimeoutException: Timed out waiting for [http://localhost:38622/status] to be available after 20014 ms
    at org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker.waitUntilAvailable(UrlChecker.java:104)
    at org.openqa.selenium.remote.service.DriverService.start(DriverService.java:163)
    ... 9 more
Caused by: com.google.common.util.concurrent.UncheckedTimeoutException: java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
    at com.google.common.util.concurrent.SimpleTimeLimiter.callWithTimeout(SimpleTimeLimiter.java:143)
    at org.openqa.selenium.net.UrlChecker.waitUntilAvailable(UrlChecker.java:79)
    ... 10 more

nsv999 · Answer 1 · Mar 30, 2018

I was getting the same error and later I found realized that I had the 64 bit version of the IEDriver.exe on my system, but I was on a 32 bit windows platform. So this error was indicating that the OS failed to execute the driver program. I tried to run the driver directly in a command prompt to see that infact the 32 bit OS was not recognizing the 64 bit driver exe as an executable program.

Getting the correct 32 bit IEDriver.exe solved my problem. So, maybe the issue is the same even at your end.