Can't connect to my Home Assistant after first installation

curiousRobot · January 9, 2026, 11:28am

Hi there,
I am lost. This is the first time I wanted to set up Home Assistant. I purchased an Intel Nuc and flashed the interal SSD with the newest image as found per the official documentation (I used Method 1).

Home Assistant seems to be running fine. It says “System is ready! Use the browser or app to configure.”.
I can reach the Observer URL just fine. But I cannot for the life of me reach the Home Assistant URL. I tried homeassistant.local:8123, I tried the IP address of home assistant with the port at the end but it just says This site can’t be reached
homeassistant.local refused to connect.

I downgraded the version from 2026.1.0 to 2025.12.5 since I’ve saw a post reporting a similar issue when trying to reach the UI of HA a couple of days ago running this newest version. Still no success.

When I try to rebuild the core it encounters an unknown error. if i look at the supervisor logs it says home assistant has crashed again. Restarting the router, home assistant or anything else hasn’t work either.

I’m lost. What am I missing? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,
a new, desperate HA user.

lorcott · January 9, 2026, 12:17pm

I had a similar issue. I learned that seeing Observer is an indication that your network is good. However if you can’t see 8123, it generally means a core crash of some type. I remedied this by doing a new install and it seems to have cleared up the issue…hope this helps. s

curiousRobot · January 9, 2026, 2:07pm

I intentionally avoided this but you’re right. After doing a new install it works… Thanks!

IOT7712 · January 10, 2026, 5:12am

General question: Why are there so many core crashing incidents being reported? Is it a bundling issue, a documentation issue, a software bug, or have there been some unrelated changes that have not been integrated well? It should work automagically, certainly not trip up new users on their first foray out, forcing them to delve deeply into the innards to implement workarounds. You shouldn’t have to do a new install - it should have worked the first time.