Imagine you walk into a public restroom (your network port). You turn the lock on the door to "Vacant" (Exclusive). You walk in, but the door jams. You are stuck inside waiting. Outside, the server console keeps saying "Initializing..." because it hasn't finished locking the door.
If no process is running, the server likely left behind a "dirty flag" (a file indicating the server is active) from the last session. You must manually delete this. 7 days to die server stuck initializing exclusive
If you have Docker Desktop, WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux), or Hyper-V enabled, Windows automatically reserves a massive block of ephemeral ports (often including 26900). Imagine you walk into a public restroom (your network port)