TLDR; the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 failed so I had to clean install. After the clean install, half of my steam games aren't launching. Reinstalling DirectX gives me an error on 1 dll which I can't fix.
Some background information:
I bought a new computer a month ago because I wanted to upgrade to Windows 11 and my motherboard wasn't compatible. The hardware upgrade went smooth and there were no issues. Windows update told me Windows 11 would soon be installed.
Fast forward 5 weeks and I'm getting impatient. I download the Windows 11 installation media which will upgrade my OS. I didn't had enough disk space available so I cleaned stuff up so I had barely enough space to do the upgrade. This is probably where it started going downhill.
The installation of Windows 11 failed and got stuck in a loop between 'we are undoing some changes' --> BSOD --> Restart. Later on I read you need 64GB of free space for the upgrade and I only got 15GB after Windows 11 was downloaded.
The OS was botched and I couldn't fix it in any way so I bought a new SSD, prepared an installation media and booted the installation. I installed Windows 11 Pro N on the new SSD and everything seemed fine. I restored my application and installed all Windows updates.
At this point I got 4 disks.
- C: the new SSD with Windows 11
- D: the old SSD with Windows 10
- F: an SSD with most of my games and Steam installed
- G: an SSD with some games from Steam
I installed steam again but accidentally on C. I reinstalled it on F again so Windows would find it. I uninstalled Steam from C, this did not seem to affect anything.
Where it went wrong
After this I started a game for the first time and after a quick 'Preparing to launch' the game didn't launch and quit on itself, no screen was shows. I try a few games and some work, while others show all the same symptoms.
Examples of games that are affected:
- Territory Idle: Doesn't start at all after preparing launch pop up
- DPS Idle: Doesn't start at all after preparing launch pop up
- Lord of the Rings Online: Launcher is shows, but after the login and clicking on 'Play' nothing happens and the game quits.
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Does work but always performance first time setup (installing Microsoft DirectX step 1 of 1) and crashes if alt-tabbing after character selection screen.
What I tried I figured some frameworks might be missing so here is an extensive list of everything I have installed and tried:
- Installed all VC ++ redistributables
- Installed .NET Frameworks 3.5 (SP1), 4.8 and 6.1
- Installed DirectX as administrator which failed on two package; Feb2006_XACT_x64.cab and Feb2006_XACT_x86.cab. Both fail with the message '
Unable to load C:\Windows\system32\xactengine2_0.dll.' although the x64 DLL is clearly there and put there by the DirectX installation itself. Trying to manually register the DLL results in error code 3. - Installed all Windows Updates (except for one, see below).
- Installed latest graphic drivers
- Tried different graphic card
- Tried launching as Administrator
- Executed command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
- Executed command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
- Executed command DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
- Executed command SFC /Scannow
- Tried launching with different compatibility modes
- Tried launching outside of Steam
- Tried disabling Steam overlay
- Tried installing failed DirectX packages in Safemode
- Installed Microsoft Windows SDK (for potential missing dll's)
- Checked DLL dependencies with Dependencies
- Removed 'Read only' attributes from game folders
- Tried reinstalling games
- Removed game from account and adding again
- Running DxDiag, which prompts with the error 'Error: Problem getting extra sound information'.
- Installed RealTek audio drivers
- Disable Antivirus
- Disable Firewall
- There were several reboots inbetween previous steps, especially combined with software installations.
Windows reports DirectX 12 is installed, but I'm a bit worried about the installation error messages concerning DirectX. Event viewer isn't giving me any information beside the fact that the game crashed.
In addition, at Windows update I get the following error but I don't think it has anything to do with it: 2022-08 Security Update for Windows 11 for x64-based Systems (KB5012170) - Install error - 0x800f0922
I don't know what to do anymore. My gut tells me it is DirectX related, but I don't know how to fix this as I think I tried everything already.
What is there left for me to do beside a clean installation (again!).
