Yet another person with Launcher issue as of the last couple of days.

Vraedlich · July 11

For me the launcher opens, and I have a lit up "PLAY" button, but the launcher "cannot load the news", and the play button causes the launcher to crash.
"Zenimax Online Studios Launcher has stopped working".

I tried the repair option, restarting the client, restarting the computer.

Yes, I know how to load the exe directly, but unless the game is able to patch through launcher, this will not be useful down the line.

I feel like not enough people posting launcher issues are posting their windows version, as something similar happened before and it turned out everyone was on an older version of Windows as mine is.

Obviously something was done to the launcher by ZOS.

Melkorrian · July 11

After yesterday evening, launcher just closes when I click "Play". It just disappears. However, yesterday afternoon I was still able to log into the game without any problems. For me it happens without any errors, notifications, etc. - it just closes as soon as I click "Play". News in the launcher is still shown, it is updated and works - but it does not let me into the game.

I tried several solutions that seemed to help other players, but none of them helped me. It's strange that the developers still haven't reported anything, because looking at the news and discussions on Steam, Reddit, and other social networks, the problem came to many peoples. Not all, but many.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom - please, maybe you have some news about these problems?

I play on PC, Steam, Windows 10.

React · July 11

This is happening to me as well. Launcher either stuck on "loading", or will give me the option to hit "play" but then the game just freezes instantly. If it does get to that point, the news menu isn't loading. Also tried repairing as well as all the troubleshooting steps on the support section of the website.

I was playing last night just fine, and before going to bed I installed the latest windows update. These issues started this morning upon trying to load the game, and additionally my file explorer seems to be having some new issues as well. I suspect this is related to the latest windows update but it would be great to get some confirmation.

Vraedlich · July 11

React wrote: »

This is happening to me as well. Launcher either stuck on "loading", or will give me the option to hit "play" but then the game just freezes instantly. If it does get to that point, the news menu isn't loading. Also tried repairing as well as all the troubleshooting steps on the support section of the website.

I was playing last night just fine, and before going to bed I installed the latest windows update. These issues started this morning upon trying to load the game, and additionally my file explorer seems to be having some new issues as well. I suspect this is related to the latest windows update but it would be great to get some confirmation.

Definitely not windows update related for me, I'm on Windows 7. xD

The game is not guaranteed to work on Windows 7, so when something like this happens I try to find out if they've finally made it 100% incompatible yet. Once they "broke" the launcher for people on Win 7 by using code only compatible for Win 8 and above. So there are a lot of things that can go wrong. But I did hear someone on Win 10 was having launcher issues too.

React · July 11

Vraedlich wrote: »

React wrote: »

This is happening to me as well. Launcher either stuck on "loading", or will give me the option to hit "play" but then the game just freezes instantly. If it does get to that point, the news menu isn't loading. Also tried repairing as well as all the troubleshooting steps on the support section of the website.

I was playing last night just fine, and before going to bed I installed the latest windows update. These issues started this morning upon trying to load the game, and additionally my file explorer seems to be having some new issues as well. I suspect this is related to the latest windows update but it would be great to get some confirmation.

Definitely not windows update related for me, I'm on Windows 7. xD

The game is not guaranteed to work on Windows 7, so when something like this happens I try to find out if they've finally made it 100% incompatible yet. Once they "broke" the launcher for people on Win 7 by using code only compatible for Win 8 and above. So there are a lot of things that can go wrong. But I did hear someone on Win 10 was having launcher issues too.

To update my own post;

I had to restore my PC past the previous windows update to resolve my file explorer issues, which also made me able to launch ESO normally. So windows security update kb5058379 is what bricked my computer and the ESO launcher.

Vraedlich · July 11

React wrote: »

To update my own post;

I had to restore my PC past the previous windows update to resolve my file explorer issues, which also made me able to launch ESO normally. So windows security update kb5058379 is what bricked my computer and the ESO launcher.

Nice! Congrats.

Except since it affects Windows 7 too, it is still a ZOS created problem. It is strange there are several different symptoms people are having and different cures.

Vraedlich · July 11

The launcher is calling for a dll that doesn't exist in Windows 7. They did this before once.

07/11/2025 03:11:25 DEBUG - Unable to load library (C:\Windows\system32\shcore.dll)

"The shcore.dll file is not available on Windows 7. It was introduced in Windows 8.1 and higher. If a program compiled for a newer version of Windows requires shcore.dll and is run on Windows 7, it will encounter a "missing shcore.dll" error. "

To be fair even that might not be the reason it doesn't work.

Could be chrome related.