XCOM Enemy withing wont launch

[DAOWAce]

I also have the same problem on my Windows 7 install.

 

Was booting over to it (from Vista) in order to try and troubleshoot a problem I had with my save crashing almost immediately after loading it.

 

EU starts up just fine.. but EW goes into that 'preparing to launch -> launcher comes back up' cycle.

 

Been searching and searching and trying various things to get it working.. but EW still refuses to work.

 

So, I guess the game's just unplayable on my 7 install. Maybe an entire steam/game reinstallation would get it working, but hell if I'm trying that when it's not my main OS.

[dubiousintent]

If you are "dual booting", then yes you do have to install the game under both OS versions if you want to play it under both. That's so the registry entries for both are properly created. If you follow the guidelines laid out in the "Installing Games on Vista+" wiki article, then you simply install Steam to a non-"Program Files" folder (such as "C:\Games") and it's usable with either OS after both have the correct registry entries. (If it's under "Program Files" then it won't be, as those folders will have different "ownership" and protections.) Once installed, then you proceed with modding.

 

As you have already been playing, just make a backup of your "My Documents\My Games\XCOM" game folder as a safety precaution and you should have no problems resuming your game once you get your basic install in place and functional, and then the same mods installed.

 

And for the record, there is absolutely no reason to stay with Vista if you have Win 7. Far and away better in all respects.

 

-Dubious-

[DAOWAce]

And for the record, there is absolutely no reason to stay with Vista if you have Win 7. Far and away better in all respects.

Oh please. You could say the same about 7 in regard to 8, and then 8.1, and then 10.

 

I've been through this "Vista sux" FUD with people hundreds of times now.

 

Reinstall Vista; it's barely any different from 7. In fact, the UI is far better both in terms of aesthetic and performance; it doesn't sluggishly paint even basic explorer windows like 7 does. It doesn't have HPET issues. It still has numerous classic features that have been a part of Windows since 95 that I still use to this day. Oh, and it doesn't need the platform update uninstalled to run a few older games. There's next no difference in application performance between them either (7 only does media handling better.. that's it).

 

7 removed so much and needlessly changed the UI when at its core it's nothing more than VistaSE. Microsoft changed come Windows 8 when they tried to save it by updating it with 8.1. They abandoned Vista back then and people who actually used it (and preferred it) have been left outside in the cold ever since. Fun fact: Vista had a higher market share than 8 for MONTHS after its release.

 

But hey, believe me, I'd love to use 7, but the UI is so atrocious that I can't have it as my main OS. I keep linking people to this, as it shows the main problems with 7's UI and why I stick with Vista: http://imgur.com/a/DXZ0G

 

 

As for the topic: That was the first thing I did, even though you almost never need to reinstall Steam games (only Steam), as it's quite portable. I copied the registry key over to avoid a full reinstall, no dice. I reinstalled the entire game (using the old files, because the damn thing is 20GB), no dice. I reinstalled Steam to that OS, no dice. I spent an hour troubleshooting it further and nothing got it working.

 

Just as the OP said, only EU works, and there is no obvious reason why EW doesn't. Search the official and Steam forums, you'll find a bunch of posts about this, and nobody has ever figured out a solution. The only real difference between them is that most have it crash or hang; mine doesn't, it just exits immediately and brings up the launcher again. Doesn't even write anything to the event log.

 

The only thing I can think of trying now is, as I unclearly said, to do a full Steam/game reinstall; ie downloading everything again and run it bare stock separate from my old Steam install, along with not pointing my documents folder to my other OS. If that doesn't work, I doubt it will ever.

Edited October 30, 2014 by DAOWAce

[Derriuz]

Same problem, Windows 8.1 with Intel CPU and GeForce graphics card. Enemy Within refuses to launch (no launcher window). Worked fine with Windows 7, AMD CPU and Radeon 7800 HD.

The problem I encountered seems to have to lie within EW's launcher, since X-Com: Enemy Unknown itself launches without a problem. EW executables though both launch the EW's launcher, which fails.

Fix: Running Windows compatibility tool/wizard accessible under Launcher's Properties (under right-click menu) set it's compatibility mode to Windows 8 and the game launches properly now. Same trick works after installing Long War mod.

Hope this will help someone.

 

P. S.: Excuse my necro but I haven't found this solution anywhere else and I figured others who have the same problem might bump into this page just like I did and hopefully find their solution.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Derriuz

[DAOWAce]

Still relevant.

 

Reminded me I still had a LW campaign I needed to finish.

 

I've now fully switched over to my Windows 7 installation due to a pending hardware upgrade (no Vista support from Intel on anything beyond Ivy Bridge), now I can no longer play EW at all.

 

Played around with compatibility settings but nothing's changed anything, EW still doesn't launch.

 

I cannot understand what could possible be wrong with the game.

[jonal11]

"

Still relevant.

 

Reminded me I still had a LW campaign I needed to finish.

 

I've now fully switched over to my Windows 7 installation due to a pending hardware upgrade (no Vista support from Intel on anything beyond Ivy Bridge), now I can no longer play EW at all.

 

Played around with compatibility settings but nothing's changed anything, EW still doesn't launch.

 

I cannot understand what could possible be wrong with the game."

 

I have been having this problem and so far 2k support has only had me do things I have already tried. It seems they don't have any idea how to fix this either.

Edited August 27, 2015 by jonal11

[dubiousintent]

@DAOWAce and @jonal11: Have you seen the wiki article "Basic Guide to installing mods"? In particular follow the instructions in the "Environments" section, which is also the essence of post #2 in this thread. It is pretty essential that you have XCOM installed outside of the default "C:\Program Files" folder trees, especially when you have problems like this.

 

EW is considered a "DLC", and as such installs parts of itself in the user "My Games" folder. See the "Loose Files" section of the "Basic Guide" for the paths involved. If you have any of these paths remapped to other drive letters somehow (especially after initial installation of Steam), it may be causing problems. You need "full control" access to these folders as well.

 

I'm wondering if you are perhaps running afoul of the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) trap from Secure Boot covered in the "Windows 8.1 and later with Secure Boot" section of the "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article, which is really a hardware based issue. But this just a shot in the dark.

 

Please see the "Troubleshooting Basics" wiki article and try to get us an error message. We need detailed information to figure out what is wrong.

 

-Dubious-

Edited August 27, 2015 by dubiousintent

[jonal11]

@DAOWAce and @jonal11: Have you seen the wiki article "Basic Guide to installing mods"? In particular follow the instructions in the "Environments" section, which is also the essence of post #2 in this thread. It is pretty essential that you have XCOM installed outside of the default "C:\Program Files" folder trees, especially when you have problems like this.

 

EW is considered a "DLC", and as such installs parts of itself in the user "My Games" folder. See the "Loose Files" section of the "Basic Guide" for the paths involved. If you have any of these paths remapped to other drive letters somehow (especially after initial installation of Steam), it may be causing problems. You need "full control" access to these folders as well.

 

I'm wondering if you are perhaps running afoul of the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) trap from Secure Boot covered in the "Windows 8.1 and later with Secure Boot" section of the "Installing Games on Windows Vista+" article, which is really a hardware based issue. But this just a shot in the dark.

 

Please see the "Troubleshooting Basics" wiki article and try to get us an error message. We need detailed information to figure out what is wrong.

 

-Dubious-

Thanks for the info. My problem ended up being a corrupted user profile. When I made a new profile it worked fine. (I viewed the event viewer and looked up issue with microsoft, it worked, who knew?) Thank you for replying though, it made me look for a lot of other things, I was convinced it was the graphics driver.

 

My eyes are bleeding from what you had me read, but I don't remember seeing an easy way to reinstall steam in a c:/games/ and not lose all save game date or need to reinstall games. I think it's a good idea to avoid future issues.

[jonal11]

If you could link an "easy" way to transfer that would be great. Or I will just bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.

[DAOWAce]

Just to update my situation for anyone reading:

 

I needed to reinstall Long War, which in turn meant I had to reinstall the game.

 

Some time during my transition to another OS the game decided to corrupt itself. I couldn't even launch it (EW) on the older OS anymore.

 

I did a reinstall from scratch onto a new drive and then reinstalled LW, everything worked just fine after that.

 

I will never know what happened.