Stellaris doesn't start...

[Felix01123581321]

I purchased Stellaris on Microsoft Store and it doesn't start. In fact it does nothing at all.

What I already did:
- Lauching through MS-Store and by clicking on the icon have the same effect: None
- Being admin doesn't change that, neither restarting nor reinstalling
- I updated Windows
- I updated all drivers (graphics card too)
- Stellaris is permitted to communicate throug the firewall
- Played the game earlier on same PC, but back then I used GamePass (worked well) and after that I deinstalled it (Maybe remains? But where)
- I use Avira

I'm thankful for any help!

 

[AndrewT]

That's odd because Gamepass and the Windows 10 store provide the same game edition to you.

When you say nothing at all, you mean you don't even see our launcher? Or you see that but the game won't run from it?

Do check in Avira's blocked apps list to see if any of these have been stopped:

dowser.exe
bootstrapper-v2.exe
paradox launcher.exe
stellaris.exe

 

[Felix01123581321]

Thanks for your fast reply!

I mean I don't even see the launcher. The cursor shows this loading animation for about 1sec but thats all. Via TaskManager I observed during start attempt, but found no processes that point to stellaris or paradox.

Paradox Launcher.exe and Stellaris.exe are in Avira's exception list now. I didn't find the other two, they are definitely not in an subdirectory of C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\... In which path do they usually get installed?
To test that anyway, I turned off Avira's System Protection before another start attempt but nothing changed.

 

[AndrewT]

Thinking more about it, the launcher in the MS edition of this game is a canned installation and doesn't do its own updates, so they won't be there.

In which case I don't know why the launcher will not work for you! Especially as the identical launcher used to work. Does the Gamepass edition still work?

Does it make any difference if you launch this game from the Xbox app or the MS store app?

And can we see the launcher logs which should be in C:/users/<UserName>/AppData/Local/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/logs/

 

[Felix01123581321]

The Gamepass edition has been deinstalled and I don't have Gamepass at the moment. It makes no difference if I launch from Xbox app or MS Store. The Paradox directory in /AppData/Local/ is missing.

Recently the game launched after I added Paradox Launcher.exe and Stellaris.exe in Avira's exception list and restarted my PC. That worked several times and I had no problem anymore. But today I connected to VPN and since then it doesn't work anymore and behaves like I described before, again. Disconnecting VPN and restarting had no effect.

 

[AndrewT]

The 3.0.4 patch that came out the other day changed the MP system to use a different back end. But that has nothing to do with the game being able to start at all. So it's hard to see how the VPN could have had that effect, I suspect that's a coincidence.

However the new stellaris.exe might need to be added to the Avira exceptions list , can you look into that?

 

[Felix01123581321]

Hello AndrewT,
after your first reply I've added to Avira's exception list:
- C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\ParadoxInteractive.Stellaris-MicrosoftStoreEdition_3.0.209.0_x64__z***y\stellaris.exe
- C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\ParadoxInteractive.Stellaris-MicrosoftStoreEdition_3.0.209.0_x64__z***y\launcher\launcher-bin\Paradox Launcher.exe
Then it worked, seemingly until the 3.0.4 patch.

I kicked both entries from Avira's exception list, re-added them and restartet my PC. Now the game launches again!
I'll let you know if this happens again in the future but I think the fix is to re-add both entries to the list.

Thanks for your support and patience!

 

[AndrewT]

Great, all the best!

PS: You'll probably have to do that after every patch I'm afraid.