RAW: SymInitialize() failed error (reported by others as well)

I am having an error that prevents me from completing flower experiments. I am using anaconda 3. There are others who have reported a similar error: Windows SymInitialize() error

How severe does this issue affect your experience of using Ray? Very High (renders the code unrunnable and I cannot locate a workaround)

I am using Windows 11, Python version 3.9.17 (error reproducible after changing interpreter to Python 3.11.5), and I was using flower to try to run some federated learning experiments. I expected to see the experiments execute successfully, but I am getting the error message (reported by others in the link above as well):

[2024-02-12 09:02:59,156][flwr][INFO] - Starting Flower simulation, config: ServerConfig(num_rounds=2, round_timeout=None)
2024-02-12 09:03:04,167 INFO worker.py:1724 – Started a local Ray instance.
[symbolize_win32.inc : 53] RAW: SymInitialize() failed: 87
Fatal Python error: Aborted

Stack (most recent call first):
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\ray_private\worker.py”, line 2342 in connect
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\ray_private\worker.py”, line 1726 in init
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\ray_private\client_mode_hook.py”, line 103 in wrapper
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\flwr\simulation\app.py”, line 211 in start_simulation
File “…\VScodefiles\Adaptive-Client-Side-Optimization\AE\flower\run_simulation.py”, line 166 in run_sa
File “…\VScodefiles\Adaptive-Client-Side-Optimization\AE\main.py”, line 108 in main
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra\core\utils.py”, line 186 in run_job
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra_internal\hydra.py”, line 119 in run
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra_internal\utils.py”, line 458 in
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra_internal\utils.py”, line 220 in run_and_report
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra_internal\utils.py”, line 457 in _run_app
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra_internal\utils.py”, line 394 in _run_hydra
File “…\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\hydra\main.py”, line 94 in decorated_main
File “…\VScodefiles\Adaptive-Client-Side-Optimization\AE\main.py”, line 113 in