Game won't start up

[sinclari]

Hey guys,

I know this someone made a similar thread around 7 years ago, and after reading through it and trying everything that was available, I am stumped. The main issue is that I seemingly can't open any new games that I download. at first I thought it was a virus, but after repeating it like 20 times and checking through the comments under the game, it seems like I am the only one having this issue. There is no error message or any indication that the game will not start, not even anything in task manager shows that the game is running. I have tried this recently with Magical OL MajiCareer Arisa [v1.0.2] [botchman] and Lady Knight Quest [v1.01] [ShiroKuroSoft], and it won't start up. The only games that worked and continue to work are Black Souls and Black Souls 2.

If anyone knows how to help with this issue, I am open to trying anything. It would also be helpful to know if this is even solvable, since I am on windows 11 and the problem with the thread 7 years ago was that the games were apparently running on 32bit and those things won't run on 64bit. I am also happy to provide further information on whatever it is you need to know.

 

[Winterfire]

There could be a few issues:
1- Make sure to unzip the game on a readable location (ex. C:/Games), use 7zip and make sure japanese language is installed, the files need to be cleanly named (aka: They should have the japanese names they have, and not gibberish [] []).
2- Run them through japanese locale: https://f95zone.to/threads/how-to-run-japanese-games-on-windows.1040/
3- Install DirectX 9.0:

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and other requirements for those specific games, often involving the requirements of the engine used (idk which one it is, I assume RPGM, but each RPGM has their own specific requirements, DirectX 9.0 being one of them).
4- Run as Administrator, and make sure you have no overlay application blocking it (I heard of controller software overlaying and blocking some applications, but more often than not, it's the antivirus doing it quietly in the background).

 

[sinclari]

So I went through your suggestions

For the install directx 9.0, I had the same problem as the guy from before where it says I cannot download it because I already have an existing one, and on windows 11, you cannot get rid of it. I also don't think that the location of the files is wrong, because I can access everything else on the file, just not the game.exe. Running as administrator also does not work. I just checked task manager and it had the game running like 7 times but only as a background process.

I would also like to say that im not exactly the best with these kinds of things, so if there is like a simpler problem that this could be, please let me know too.

 

[Winterfire]

Can you try a different compatibility mode? End all of those running processes, then go on proprieties, compatibility, and set something like Vista, XP, etc. Try a bunch of the old ones, and see if any of them runs it.

-edit-
Also, make sure to run in Administrator.

 

[sinclari]

I just ran through all of the available options and none of them worked. But I got a question: is it normal for the options to only go up to windows 8? because that was the most recent option available for the game i was trying.

 

[Winterfire]

I just ran through all of the available options and none of them worked. But I got a question: is it normal for the options to only go up to windows 8? because that was the most recent option available for the game i was trying.

Do you have two or more monitors?

 

[sinclari]

Nope im only on a windows 11 laptop.

 

[Winterfire]

Reading through this:

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It goes through the obvious, have you tried updating your drivers? If you're using a gaming laptop, have you tried running the game with your dedicated GPU? Also, to my experience, color management in windows 11 can screw up with some applications, try switching it on or off (in my case, some applications work with it off, and others won't work with it on), making a specific profile for it would be a better idea if that's the issue.

Other things you could try are from the "compatibility" category as before: DPI scaling and Full screen optimizations.

Can't think of anything else nor can I find anything else that could fix your issue.

 

[sinclari]

Holy shit man, thank you so much. I finally got it to work, I think it was the drivers issue. I really appreciate it, ive been trying this for literal months.

 

[Winterfire]

Glad you got it working!