High severitygateway
Power BI Refresh Error:
Unable to Connect. Details: "Unknown error in data gateway"
What does this error mean?
A generic gateway error with no inner detail. Usually the gateway service crashed, was stopped, or lost its Azure Service Bus connection.
Common causes
- 1The gateway Windows service crashed or was stopped
- 2The gateway lost its connection to the Azure Service Bus relay
- 3A gateway update was applied and the service needs a restart
- 4Resource exhaustion on the gateway machine (CPU, memory, disk space)
- 5Anti-virus or Windows Defender blocked a gateway DLL or network operation
How to fix it
- 1Check the gateway logs in %localappdata%\Microsoft\On-premises data gateway for error detail.
- 2Check Windows Event Viewer → Application log for crashes in PBIEgwService.
Beyond the docs
Common practitioner solutions not covered in the official documentation.
- 1Open Services.msc on the gateway machine and restart the 'On-premises data gateway' service
- 2Verify the gateway machine has sufficient disk space (spooling errors can cause this)
- 3Temporarily disable real-time anti-virus scanning on the gateway install folder and retry
- 4If the error persists, uninstall and reinstall the gateway using the latest installer from Microsoft