npx create-nx-workspace@latest <workspace name> fails to create nx cloud instance

[mmart1n]

Current Behavior

Hi team,

On one of our Windows machines, I'm encountering an issue when initializing and serving a new Angular Nx workspace.

I run the following command to create the workspace:

npx create-nx-workspace@latest <workspace-name>

The workspace is created successfully without any errors. However, when I try to serve the project using:

npx nx run <workspace-name>:serve

I receive the following output:

Successfully ran target serve for project <workspace-name>
NX   No existing Nx Cloud client and failed to download new version

The same issue occurs when I fork an existing Nx Angular project — after running npm install, any attempt to run the project results in the same error.

This issue is isolated to one of our five Windows machines. All machines are managed by our organization and are running the same versions of Node and npm. Proxy settings also appear to be configured identically across all devices.

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot or resolve this issue?

Thanks in advance!

Expected Behavior

after running npm install to create instance of nx cloud in .nx/cache/cloud

GitHub Repo

No response

Steps to Reproduce

I can reproduce it on only one machine

Nx Report

Successfully ran target serve for project <workspace-name>

NX   No existing Nx Cloud client and failed to download new version

Failure Logs

Package Manager Version

npm

Operating System

• macOS
• Linux
• Windows
• Other (Please specify)

Additional Information

No response

[mmart1n]

It seems the issue is related to this machine being restricted from accessing the Windows registry. Specifically, the following command fails:

REG QUERY HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography /v MachineGuid

This appears to be blocked by organizational policy on this particular device.

Is there any way to bypass this limitation or configure Nx to function without requiring access to the MachineGuid registry key? We'd prefer not to request a policy change if there's an alternative approach.

Any guidance would be appreciated — thanks!

[IamJoshB]

Yo @mmart1n If you have nxCloudId specified on your nx.json file try removing that and run it again. That worked for me.