[MCPE-90372] Unable to join some multiplayer worlds but can join others (stuck on "locating server")

Potential Workarounds

Workaround 1

Originally posted here.

All players need to move away from the glitched player* and unload that chunk (12-24 chunks at least. One chunk is 16 blocks). Make sure the glitched player is currently “locating server”.
All players except the host must leave the server. If the glitched player* has a non-Xbox or alternate Xbox account in the world, then you might need to move them away from those chunks as well. (Maybe has something to do with device memory)
Host will need to restart or close the server and rejoin with no additional players other than the glitched player* (with Xbox account).
If the glitched player* passes the “locating server” window and successfully joins, then all other players may join and go back to the chunk where the glitched player* spawned.

Workaround 2

Posted in comment below. This will kill the player but allows them to respawn at a different location.

Go to where the glitched player is (where they last exited the world).
Pick a splash potion of poison and a splash potion of instant harming.
Throw the splash potion of poison on the player, and wait until he gets all the damage.
After a time, throw the splash potion of harming at the glitched player.

Workaround 3

Posted in comment below.

Place a piston next to the glitched player.
Activate the piston to push the player.
Have the player exit the world and reload.

I've started having this problem recently. I will try to join my friend's world, but every time the loading screen is stuck on "Locating Server" although my name appears on the list of people in the world. My friend will also be able to see me leaving the game without joining if I cancel the "Locating Server." This only seems to happen on a certain world which is over 150 MB. It's a fairly large survival world with a lot of builds. My friend created a new world, and I was able to join that one, but not the other.

When two people joined my friend's world, this started to happen. I have not been able to join since that and we've tried resetting our devices and she cleared her cache. It still does not work. I'm hoping this problem will get fixed soon because recently my friend has gotten more people to play and I was looking forward to building with them.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 145

BDS-9432 Friend Stuck on "Locating Server" Joining Specific World Resolved

BDS-11856 Locating Server loading stuck Resolved

BDS-11944 locating server Resolved

BDS-12281 Locating server Resolved

BDS-13711 When I try and join my friends world my screen freezes on locating server Resolved

140 more links

relates to 5

REALMS-1888 Unable to interact with world Resolved

MCPE-87744 Second split screen player stuck on generating world screen Open

MCPE-133581 Remote player unable to join world due to Rotation value set to NaN Resolved

MCPE-168247 World does not fully load and player cannot move when joining multiplayer game Resolved

REALMS-5465 Stuck on "Building Terrain" Screen when Attempting to Join Realm Resolved

Comments 32

[Mod] Umija5895M 2020-09-30T03:28:28Z

Reopening this as it seems to be a different, though possibly related issue, than MCPE-36190. This and the other linked tickets indicate that they can connect to shared multiplayer worlds on the same host if they are smaller than some uncertain size.

[Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay) 2020-11-11T13:43:12Z

If you have a copy of the world available, you might like to upload a copy of it for investigation.

On Windows 10 you can use the Export world feature.
On Android or iOS you need to use a file explorer to navigate to Device storage > games > com.mojang > minecraftWorlds
On Xbox or Switch the only way is to upload it to a Realm, and then download the world on Windows 10 or Android/iOS. (Please do not purchase a Realms subscription just to provide a world to us - but if you have a Realm already this may be a viable option if you wish to do so.)

If the world is larger than 10MB you can upload the world to OneDrive or a similar file sharing site, and then share the link.

Thenewchicken 2021-01-01T19:09:56Z

I have a world that doesn't work(with it's duplicates) but I can't upload.

^ what I mean is that no matter how much we duplicate the world, it won't work.

Joshua.John 2021-01-25T09:19:36Z

Hi,
My friend has had this issue and I reported it here (https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCPE-114899?filter=-2 ) and I was told to get a download of the world and upload it here we have been trouble doing this and i asked for help on it but no response I was wondering if you could help here thanks!

Thenewchicken 2021-02-20T16:51:27Z

Yeah I can't upload them either. They need to increase upload file size limit.

22 more comments

[Mod] OcelotOnesie 2021-02-27T23:15:38Z

You can upload the world to OneDrive or a similar file sharing site, and then share the link here.

Thenewchicken 2021-03-18T23:03:35Z

That's a weird way to do it. Anyways here's this. It's a world over 100 mb and another under 100 mb. we can play the under 100 mb but we stopped. there's also other things in there. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11BSdOEPYQe753vL5-yeiTacjO0XbO4LO/view?usp=sharing or click here

Joshua.John 2021-04-03T10:17:09Z

hi on my post it says its resolved but on this duplicate it says its postponed and you please verify weather its been fixed or not?

Thenewchicken 2021-04-08T22:06:36Z

@Joshua.John
If it's a duplicate, they mark it as resolved and link you to the main thread. They should get to it and solve it already. I hate restarting.

Systems Guy 2021-04-22T16:45:48Z

My son and I followed the steps listed in the workaround above and it worked for us. It's worth a try.

I went about 3x farther than necessary as we have a huge mining system. I was a good 1000+ away from him when I did the exit and save. Re-entered, so did he and all was good. We think it happened to us as the previous time we played, we both exited at the exact same time. We had been working on this world for over two years! Didn't want to lose achievements by turning on cheats and killing or teleporting him.

Herbubulle 2021-06-25T11:58:04Z

i have the same bug on Nintendo Switch (sometimes)

GoldenHelmet 2021-06-25T17:51:24Z

Thenewchicken: I wanted to examine your world save but the link is no longer working. Are you able to upload it again?

Can anyone else provide a copy of an affected world?

Pedro Barbosa Bruno 2021-06-29T17:19:55Z

I have another Potential Workaround, but it may not hit the majority of the players, but is still worth it;

This issue already happened to my friend on my survival world, and we did the following steps:

1. Go to where the glitched player is.
2. Pick a splash potion of poison and a splash potion of instant harming.
3. throw the splash potion of poison on the player, and wait until he gets all the damage
4. after a time, throw the splash potion of harming at the glitched player

make sure that the player is locating server at all time.

Expected Result?

The player will die but will no longer be glitched.

I tried that with my affected friend and it resolved.

Tony Swanda 2021-08-06T23:49:26Z

Hi Reptorix here, I've been unable to reconnect to my best friends World since last night, everytime he invites me. I get stuck in the Locating Server Screen, but it's only happening to main Xbox Series S account but it doesn't happen to our other friends when they join, it's only happening to me please Fix this Mojang.

GoldenHelmet 2021-09-07T09:05:25Z

Picomos Playz: please stop making comments that say moderator actions will be taken (resolving reports as duplicates). You are not a moderator and these comments are unwelcome and unhelpful. You can request moderator actions on the Mojira Discord: https://discord.gg/rpCyfKV.

Ercan Bircan 2021-11-16T15:28:17Z

I did what pedro said and it happened. poison and instant damage potion kills but allows it to enter the world

Larry Dabling 2022-03-03T03:07:36Z

I have a slightly different issue, everyone that attempts to join my server would get stuck on "Locating Server" then after roughly 2 hours on my BDS Server, then it suddenly works.

(the 2 hours would be no one joining the server nothing if someone does join that 2-hour time mark would reset)

KaiProGamerHD/PVP_Bananenmann2 2022-03-14T17:44:33Z

@Larry Dabling when i try to do it i get kicked because minecraft gives up when its stuck on locating server for to long. How can i bypass this?

GoldenHelmet 2022-03-18T13:04:21Z

It looks to me like this report and REALMS-5465 and MCPE-87744 are all the same issue.

It might be helpful if we could get the coordinates of the stuck player along with the world seed and render distance of the host and stuck player to try to reproduce this, or a copy of an affected world.

If you are in creative mode or have commands enabled it might work to teleport the stuck player instead of killing them with splash potions.

KaiProGamerHD/PVP_Bananenmann2 2022-03-19T09:32:47Z

No that won’t work because Minecraft says that it couldn’t find the player

GoldenHelmet 2022-03-22T17:55:47Z

Sorry about that. After doing some testing based on videos of the issue I am less inclined to think it is related to coordinates and render distance. What we really need is a copy of a world save that has an affected player.

TNT 2022-03-30T21:04:47Z

I have tried both workarounds listed, but nothing seems to be working. I can see the player spawn in, but flying away and killing the player doesn't do anything. This has also happened on another world of mine, and I don't seem to get what the issue is, because I can join other people's worlds fine, but no one can seem to join mine.
(On the most recent stable version, 1.18.2? or whatever it is)

petipetimode 2022-05-01T06:24:55Z

Maybe another workaround

I use machine translation because I am not good at English.

situation

Not stuck while connected to the world.
There are names on the list of participants.
I can see the character.
Cannot be touched with bare hands or with tools such as swords.
Coordinates are chunk boundaries.

Potential Workarounds

Pushes those who do not move with the piston to some extent.
You will be able to move when you re-enter the world.

Three people were fixed with multi-participation.

It is possible that this Workaround has recently become unavailable. We have confirmed that it was available on August 6 (Japan time), but not on August 9 (Japan time) and 14 (Japan time).Confirmed by Minecraft participatory streaming on youtube

William Michael Kanar 2022-06-09T01:40:48Z

I can confirm this exists in 1.19 on mobile with 1.19.1.01 server software. I resolved it with workaround 3.

GoldenHelmet 2022-06-19T16:00:34Z

Does lowering anti-aliasing to its lowest value in the stuck player's Settings>Video> resolve this?

I ask because I found that high anti-aliasing significantly increased load time while examining the world provided with REALMS-5465 (which I think is the same bug).

KaiProGamerHD/PVP_Bananenmann2 2022-08-23T18:51:21Z

I found another Workaround.

I changed the allow-cheats value from true to false, restarted the server and i was able to pass the locating server screen. I changed it back to true and i can still join.

COL9gamer 2022-09-08T18:20:23Z

Affects 1.19.22

Merkov 2023-07-24T20:12:51Z

Hello!

I seem to have run into this bug. Basically, I've been able to join this world on a private BDS that I operate, with the game giving me a "Locating server" message forever. In the server log, it shows that I've connected, and when I cancel it shows that I've disconnected.

I've also opened the world folder locally, and have been able to spawn in and move around. I just took a few steps and jumped once or twice, then saved and quit, and loaded the world back into the server – still stuck at "Locating server." I then went back into single player and tried moving my character a few hundred blocks away, saving and quitting, then running the world on the server again. Still stuck (though I'm not sure that the local player is the same as the one used when I'm connected to the server, so that might make sense).

What can I provide that will be of help? I have telemetry and logging enabled on the server, and I have the world folder as well as the entire server. Heck, the server's just hosted on an Azure VM with nothing else on it, so I can even give someone access to that, if it'll help.

Merkov 2023-08-29T00:28:12Z

Here's a link to my affected world: https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApN0xHnpwrOwgeZU8Lby_gviCDWY9A

GoldenHelmet 2023-08-30T04:32:13Z

In Merkov's world, I was able to fix the issue by using UME to change the affected player's position and rotation. The affected player's UniqueID is -60129542121.

	Values that triggered the bug	Values that cleared the bug
Pos1	100	101
Pos2	85.0202	85
Pos3	0	1
Rot1	83.6726	83.6726
Rot2	54.9011	0

I believe the issue with this bug is specifically that that the client hangs when trying to set the player's vertical rotation to 0 during chunk loading. Setting the player's vertical rotation to 0 is part of the normal loading process, but the pictures of affected players show that this is not happening. The player loads server-side (visible to other players) with the vertical rotation that was stored in the world save, but the client cannot finish loading. It might be possible to quick-fix this bug by having the server thread set the player's vertical rotation to 0 when saving.

GoldenHelmet 2023-09-12T06:57:49Z

Another potential workaround for this issue was suggested on MCPE-125201:

Before joining the world, change your view in settings>video settings to 3rd person.
Join the world.
While in the world, go to settings>video settings and change back to 1st person.
Leave and rejoin the world.

Can anyone still affected let us know if this works?

Fa27fr0 2023-10-07T19:53:24Z

Tried uninstalling Minecraft on Xbox series x and switch. Tried resetting Xbox series x to factory setting. Tried resetting switch to factory settings. Tried wired and wireless connection. Tried the work arounds listed above. Tried working with support. Tried signing out of Microsoft account, restarting game and creating a new world. Nothing allows me to connect to a game hosted by my son on the switch with my Xbox series x. Except for some reason connecting via a mobile hotspot, except doing that causes lag and disconnects. I can join other promoted servers, and join my realm. I can join his games with my switch, iPhone and pc.

Reply from @unknown:
The issue you are describing is different from this one, which is not specific to a device and instead is related to player save information. You may be experiencing MCPE-60667.