What happened + What you expected to happen

Hello,

after installing latest release 2.45 - no upgrade, removed older release before - I notice following fundamental issue.

Calling ray start --head in CLI leads to following console output.

(py311-raynew) C:\Users\Philipp>ray start --head
Usage stats collection is disabled.

Local node IP: 192.168.178.26
2025-05-02 16:53:36,888 ERROR services.py:1362 -- Failed to start the dashboard , return code 3221226505
2025-05-02 16:53:36,888 ERROR services.py:1387 -- Error should be written to 'dashboard.log' or 'dashboard.err'. We are printing the last 20 lines for you. See 'https://docs.ray.io/en/master/ray-observability/user-guides/configure-logging.html#logging-directory-structure' to find where the log file is.
2025-05-02 16:53:36,888 ERROR services.py:1397 -- Couldn't read dashboard.log file. Error: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xfc in position 40: invalid start byte. It means the dashboard is broken even before it initializes the logger (mostly dependency issues). Reading the dashboard.err file which contains stdout/stderr.
2025-05-02 16:53:36,888 ERROR services.py:1431 --
The last 20 lines of C:\Users\Philipp\AppData\Local\Temp\ray\session_2025-05-02_16-53-32_217596_35728\logs\dashboard.err (it contains the error message from the dashboard):

Ray runtime started.

I am surprised that the app says "Ray runtime started", but I do not get ray status feedback.

(py311-raynew) C:\Users\Philipp>ray status
No cluster status. It may take a few seconds for the Ray internal services to start up.

Content of dashboard.log file

2025-05-02 16:53:33,639 ERROR dashboard.py:305 -- The dashboard on node PHILIPP-MAIN failed with the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Philipp\anaconda3\envs\py311-raynew\Lib\site-packages\ray\dashboard\dashboard.py", line 247, in
logging_utils.redirect_stdout_stderr_if_needed(
File "C:\Users\Philipp\anaconda3\envs\py311-raynew\Lib\site-packages\ray_private\logging_utils.py", line 48, in redirect_stdout_stderr_if_needed
sys.stderr = open_log(stderr_fileno, unbuffered=True, closefd=False)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\Philipp\anaconda3\envs\py311-raynew\Lib\site-packages\ray_private\utils.py", line 446, in open_log
stream = open(path, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OSError: [WinError 6] Das Handle ist ungültig

Content of dashboard.error file

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Versions / Dependencies

ray == 2.45
Windows == 26100.3915

Reproduction script

> ray start --head

Issue Severity

High: It blocks me from completing my task.