GFWL Win8 solution and steps to follow for others

[USHiRi-CARROTTRiBE]

This post was actually written by someone else, but since it helped a lot players I will repost it here, If you need help with this post.
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Games For Windows - Live Crashing SOLUTION
Hi guys,

I've spent the last few days after buying the Codemasters racing pack getting 4 of the 5 games working. Grid and DiRT 1 were simple fixes, both have a few threads with working solution in their respective forums.

FUEL and DiRT2 however were a large pain in the ♥♥♥.

It seems that my problem was more like 2 or 3 other problems. It took a lot of working backwards to figure out, so I'm hoping that there are bits and pieces here that will be able to help some of you out.


Here is my situation, if yours is similar (even partially), I might be able to help.

Windows Drive: C:\ (SSD, Small, only for Operating System)
Storage Drive: E:\ (All my programs, games etc)
Changed Registry to force programs to install on the E Drive
Did not install Windows Live Essentials
Did not install Internet Explorer 9 (Or IE9 doesn't work)
Game using GFWL would not launch/crash shortly after launch
Games for Windows - Live (Launching from Program Files) would play the splash screen but not launch


If any of the above sounds familiar, keep reading.

You need Internet Explorer 9 (working) and the Windows Essentials both installed on your Windows drive for Games for Windows - Live to work.

Step 1:
Uninstall the following:

Internet Explorer (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/w...net-explorer-9)
Microsoft Games for Windows - Live / Related
Windows Live Essentials / Related

Restart


Step 2:
Did you alter the registry for Program Files default location?
No? - Skip to Step 3.
Yes? - Keep reading

Revert any changes you made to the registry in either of these two places:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion

If your Windows is installed on C:\ for example, make sure all of the Data values are set to the C drive.

Restart


Step 3:
Install the following:

Internet Explorer 9 (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/i...wide-languages)
Windows Live Essentials (http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials)
Games for Windows - Live (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pc/downloadclient)

Restart (I restarted between each install, not sure how necessary that was though)


Step 4:
Test all the following software.

Internet Explorer 9
MSN Messenger
Games for Windows - Live Marketplace


If any of these don't work, google should be able to help.

For more specific details on the errors; Open up Event Viewer to help find the specific problem. Click Windows Logs, then Application logs. Look for the Warning or errors. Fix these problems before continuing.


Step 5:
Skip to Step 6 if you did not change the registry.

If you changed your registry, you can now change it back.
I've found that you only need to change ProgramFilesDir and ProgramFilesDir (x86) but I'll leave that to your discretion.

Restart and test open all those programs again.


Step 6:
Test the games.


I had a few small errors in between all this along the way, which included missing DLL's and programs being installed on the wrong disk. If you come up with anything like that, re-install that software and if that doesn't work, refer to google.

Here is a flowlist of what is needed for the game to work:

To run the game, you need:
The Game; Which Needs:
Games for Windows - Live; Which Needs:
Windows Live Essentials; Which Needs:
Internet Explorer; Which needs to be in the correct directory.

I really hope I've helped someone. I will cross post this to the FUEL forum too. It's more than likely that there are other games that use GFWL that can be solved with this solution
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Help from another user
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What helped me:
Locate "Windows Live Essentials" in Add/Remove programs, hit Uninstall/Repair, then select repair, wait when it's done and run GFWL again.
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[Frit_/x/]

holy f*** ,.. another reason why i only want to use one acc. system^^ anyway, thank you for taking the time to write this. But sadly, this gave me one more reason no games to buy with GFWL! Sometimes i thing "why is steam not enough for publisher" ..

[USHiRi-CARROTTRiBE]

haha..I hope it helped you out. btw GFWL will stop working in 2014 what I read...

[unfit]

I recieved this game as a free gift for purchashing Dirt 3 during a sale. I might try this later, hopefully I will finally be able to play Dirt 3, which is what I really want.