Launcher doesn't load the game

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

Posting this in case others have the same problem. I've had ESO installed on my PC since March 2014 and it has always been stable for me. But after last week's patch, the game began crashing my PC, going to a Windows blue screen (Win10). This happened two or three days in a row. I tried Repair, then uninstalled the game and reinstalled it. After that, the launcher opens. When I click Play, the launcher does not start the game. All I get is a black window and nothing else happens.

I did call customer support, left a message and asked them to call me back. I'm waiting for a reply. I'll also open a support ticket if they don't call me back.

More details: I have a gaming desktop computer (not the latest). Nothing else is giving me any problems. What I have noticed after this last patch is that Windows says eso.exe is from an unknown publisher, so it asks if I want to let the program "make changes to your system." Since 2014, this never happened before the last patch. Both the launcher and eso.exe are set up in my Windows Defender with permissions to bypass the firewall. I do not use any antivirus software, only Windows Defender.

Is anyone else having the same or a similar problem? If yes, were you able to get it fixed. Again, if yes, how were you able to fix it?

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom please help if you can. Thanks.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

Here are two screen shots that show the problem. The first shows that when I click 'Play,' Windows does not recognize eso64.exe even though it has permission through the WinDefender firewall. This never happened before until the last few days. And the second shows that all I get after clicking 'Yes' is a black blank screen. The game does not launch.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

@ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_BillE, @ZOS_KaiSchober, @ZOS_Adrikoth, @ZOS_AntonioP @ZOS

Can anyone help me with this situation? I have played ESO since pre-launch 2014. I have purchased all the DLCs, made many Crown Store purchases, and have a continuous ESO+ account. Surely this buys me some genuine assistance from someone in ZOS.

I called customer support this morning and am still waiting for a call back. No response.
I submitted a ticket with every bit of information I could provide, including these two screen shots. No response.

I know you all have busy jobs, but I absolutely cannot play the game and need help as soon as possible. I've tried all recommended steps and nothing has worked.

ZOS_Bill · June 2021

@Wolfenbelle

For the UAC message popping up, have you tried either lowering the UAC threshhold or running the launcher as an admin?

If you currently have a ticket open, you are welcome to post the ticket number in this thread.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

@ZOS_BillE, thank you for your reply above. I could not respond until today because the problem I experienced with ESO since the last patch caused me very serious problems.

I did submit a ticket...#210621-002120. Here is the last update I made to this ticket a few minutes ago:

Apologies for my delay in responding to your message. The game kept crashing my system. Lacking a quicker answer from you, I researched the various error messages I received every time the system crashed. This led me to the Microsoft forums where I followed every recommendation Microsoft posted for this type of problem. By doing so, that led me eventually to the Microsoft Windows 10 system repair screens. Apparently there is loop with them that makes it impossible to get out of them and restart the computer back to Windows. I got stuck in that loop. There are hundreds of comments on the Microsoft forums from people who also got stuck in that loop.

So without any other solution, I brought my PC to Best Buy's Geek Squad yesterday. Hopefully they will be able to get it started again or at least recover the data on my hard drive. I also bought a new Dell gaming laptop so that I at least have a computer, but it's a real problem because I have none of my passwords for banking, paying my mortgage, car payment, and all the other things that we need passwords for. I was able to recover my ESO account and a few other things by asking for password resets.

All of this started with your last patch. I don't know the cause, but the result has been nearly catastrophic for me.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

@ZOS_BillE,

One final update to this issue. I'm passing this info along in case it might be of assistance to others. I heard from Best Buy's Geek Squad about my PC's issue. As mentioned previously ever since the last patch, the PC crashed every time I tried to load the game. Best Buy reports that there are two hard drives on that PC. One is small and appears to be unused. That small drive was damaged somehow. The other hard drive is the C: drive. Somehow it got corrupted. It did not fail, so they were able to retrieve my data. But they will need to reinstall Windows 10.

There's no way to know whether the crashes when attempting to load the game since the last patch caused this situation, or the situation was beginning coincidentally with that last patch, but maybe this info will be useful to others who might experience something similar.

Starbridge84 · June 2021

I just got a new MSi machine and I was having the same problems. Updated drivers, downloaded steam, installed game. Silent crash, EVERY TIME. I was just going to get the game from the site since I own it, but if you have it on Steam you can only download it through Steam. >.> I was going to eliminate the middle man and see if that solved my issue but I can't.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

Starbridge84 wrote: »

I just got a new MSi machine and I was having the same problems. Updated drivers, downloaded steam, installed game. Silent crash, EVERY TIME. I was just going to get the game from the site since I own it, but if you have it on Steam you can only download it through Steam. >.> I was going to eliminate the middle man and see if that solved my issue but I can't.

Starbridge84, it's very frustrating. I think what's most frustrating is that ZOS/ESO customer support is so awful. If someone had responded to my ticket quickly with useful information, that might have prevented the mess I experienced. Having read the forums for years, I'm sure the same is true for almost everyone who interacts with them. All they do is send generic responses to tickets and provide links to knowledge base pages that might or might not even be relevant to the issue.

If it helps you a bit, I don't run ESO through Steam, so that eliminates Steam as the root cause of this issue.

Starbridge84 · June 2021

I don't know. I have had good interaction with them.

Starbridge84 · June 2021

Dude I fix mine!

Ok. Uninstall the game.
Scour your machine for anything related to ESO.
DELETE IT!

Reinstall!

I was going through some of the trouble shooting stuff and sent in a ticket with my report and stuff as in the folder the report was dropped I noticed a game folder that I hadn't installed yet. So I was wondering how it got there since I hadn't installed it. Turns out it was my ONE DRIVE, you know the cloud drive that Windows users have. Deleted it and my game started right up perfectly! So I can only guess that the launcher got confused and couldn't open the game since there were 2 exe files.

Try this and let me know if that helps.

Wolfenbelle · June 2021

Starbridge84, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Starbridge84 · June 2021

How did that work out for you?