Can't start the game

Silkiestdave0 · October 2014

So i bought DoW2 and having what seems to be the usual trouble getting it to run.
I think i've covered every option on the various forums. I've tried to switch to the open beta version but there isn't the option available on the steam tab. Any ideas?

Sero · October 2014

Can you be more specific? Does it crash? What's your system specs? Is there anything that pops up when you run it, does it go to menu, etc.

Silkiestdave0 · November 2014

Erm so i get a steam message saying preparing to launch dawn of war II. then that disappears almost instantly and then nothing happens.

(Windows 7, 4gb, i5)

Gorb · November 2014

You tried verifying the game's files in Steam?

Silkiestdave0 · November 2014

yep

Gorb · November 2014

When you try to run the game, can you open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc (or keep it open before launching the game) and tell me if Dawn of War II (dow2.exe) turns up in the program list at all? Even for a few seconds?

Sero · November 2014

Also you can try

1) Exit Steam
2) Delete clientregistry.blob from the Steam folder, which deletes all of Steam's client updates
3) Restart Steam, let it re-update itself.

Or there's also this page: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6218-USFX-5568

Silkiestdave0 · November 2014

Gorb yes it does but disappears when the steam message shuts

Sero tried that no luck

WiseWindu · November 2014

Someone else recently had this problem. Do you have the right version of DirectX installed?

Nadrog · November 2015

Is a different drive for steam programm and game a problem ?

Gorb · November 2015

It shouldn't be; I have Steam on C:\ (an SSD) and DoW II installed over various drives (vDoW II and CR on one drive, Retribution on another).

Nadrog · November 2015

I just downloaded it again on the same drive as Steam but its still not working. :-/

Tsototar · January 2016

Check your DX9 - the experience you had was exactly what I had and I solved it by manually installing DX9

see:

http://community.dawnofwar.com/discussion/comment/2153/

cyclonus · January 2016

The only thing that worked for me was to delete the Dawn of War folders that contain your saved files/settings/cache, etc. They are not deleted when you uninstall/reinstall the game; and I suspect one of the patches of DoW made it incompatible with an older version.

These are the folders I deleted:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\My Games\Dawn of War II - Retribution
C:\Users\Elie\Documents\My Games\Dawn of War II - Retribution

Good luck. It's a great game, but support is useless.

Gorb · January 2016

The advice is appreciated, but I'm not sure what the point is in saying support is "useless". Kellie and I are active on here, and the game itself being several years old you'd be hard-pressed to find any game with anything more than that.

Just seems unnecessarily aggressive, s'all.

Dampiir · February 2016

Getting the crash report window opening up every time I try to run the game. Run the shortcut and the little steam box opens saying preparing to launch then that closes and I get a black screen for a second then that closes and the crash report window opens. Fresh install as I only just bought the game.
System specs:
Intel i7 4770
Ripjaws 2400 16Gb
GTX 980 4Gb
Win 10 Home

*Edit: I just started the validate files in steam and it asked if I wanted to delete all save game files (even though there are none yet) is that normal for a validate?

Dampiir · February 2016

So I just did the verify of game cache through steam and tried running again and it looks like it's not installing the DX stuff at first run, gonna have a hunt through the game files to see if I can install that stuff manually then will report back.

Dampiir · February 2016

Ok no joy manually installed all redistributables and crashes every time I run it

Gorb · February 2016

So referring to this thread the following steps are:

1. Reinstall DirectX from the folder within the DoW II install path.
2. Add the "-nomovies" parameter to the Steam launch parameters.
3. Wait through an extended load and it should work fine.

As an aside, have you tried disabling Physics in the graphics options to see if that improves the load times?

Have you launched vDoW II, Chaos Rising, or both with and without these steps applied? I ask because currently Chaos Rising works for me, but vDoW II doesn't.

lollo646 · February 2016

i've a similar problem. when i want to launch Retribution, screen becomes black for a second and then appears the Relic Error Report. i've tried to change windows compatibility, change language version, check cache integrity, uninstall and reinstall the game. the problem remain.
with Windows 7 the game was ok. now i'm using Windows 10...

Gorb · February 2016

This seems to be an issue affecting various versions of DoW II - Relic are aware of the problem, but I don't have anything more than that at this time.

lollo646 · February 2016

these are the files of Relic Error Report: DOW28S717J70.dmp*
DUH161D0.xml*
warnings.txt
do you have any ideas?

Can't start the game

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