This Game Deleted Windows 10

[PleasantAura]

Well, all that "fearmongering" apparently was warranted. I didn't think it was a huge deal at first - sure, it's an awful anti-cheat, but it can't be thaaaat bad, right? - aaaaaand then it killed my entire Windows 10 installation. Apparently, per a pinned threat, the new Windows security update is causing blue screens with GameGuard, but in 37 hours of playtime this weekend, I hadn't had any issues...until today. Today, on an otherwise clean install of Windows 10, I booted up PSO2...and blue screened. Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes. Went to restart thinking it was an unfortunate coincidence, aaaand... Windows failed to start. Logs confirm that GameGuard literally corrupted my core Windows 10 startup files to the point that Windows startup repair doesn't work and I have to entirely reinstall Windows.

God, I loved the time I had with this game, but literally a day and a half after spending almost $30 on AC and buying a month of premium, it kills my entire Windows 10 installation. Ugh.

[PleasantAura]

Originally posted by Killance:

"New windows security update"

You said it yourself what caused it. Sounds like that was Microsoft rather than GG itself.

It wouldn't cause any issues if GameGuard wasn't a rootkit disguised as a nonfunctional anticheat system. I like the game a lot and intend to continue playing and spending money on it, but double standards for the sake of defending an extremely lucrative game that intentionally uses one of the worst anticheats in modern gaming is not the answer. You have to criticize things you like - especially for horrible things like this - if you ever want them to improve. Criticism isn't bad.

[PleasantAura]

To elaborate: Microsoft's security update was a security update. GameGuard is a security hole. It would be irresponsible of Microsoft to hold back on a security update just to maintain compatibility with a badly designed security flaw of a system; updating it, as admitted by SEGA themselves in a pinned topic in this very forum, is GameGuard's responsibility.

[Requimatic]

Originally posted by Teilia:

Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes..

What logs, exactly? And did you analyze said logs yourself, or have someone else do it? (Such as folks on tech forums or something.) If you were just looking at the Event Viewer or something, it's not going to tell you the root cause of any BSOD you encounter. Just because there was a fault with GameGuard doesn't necessarily mean it was GameGuard that caused the fault.

You also mention an "otherwise clean install" of Windows. From what source did you install it? And what nature was the "clean" install? Was the drive formatted completely and Windows reinstalled from a MS DVD/USB drive, along with all of the necessary chipset and system drivers, or.. was it a "factory reset" of some sort on a pre-built Dell machine or something? (or another manufacturer, of course)

It sounds silly, but the above are actually serious questions.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but there's far, far, FAR too many people who come to game forums making hilarious claims that this or that is broken, when in fact their system setup is what's broken. Don't misunderstand, I'm not siding with Microsoft on anything here, it's entirely possible those KB files are causing issues.. what you should be asking, however, is WHY they are causing issues for you and not for others, like myself.

This is the important question no one who comes here about launcher issues seems to want to ask themselves, and instead blames Steam and/or SEGA for a "broken launcher" when it works perfectly fine for 95% of the other users using it.

Also, both of the KB files outlined in the sticky here were installed on my system the 13th of this month.. and I have zero issues.

[Kossy]

Originally posted by Requimatic:

Originally posted by Teilia:

Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes..

What logs, exactly? And did you analyze said logs yourself, or have someone else do it? (Such as folks on tech forums or something.) If you were just looking at the Event Viewer or something, it's not going to tell you the root cause of any BSOD you encounter. Just because there was a fault with GameGuard doesn't necessarily mean it was GameGuard that caused the fault.

You also mention an "otherwise clean install" of Windows. From what source did you install it? And what nature was the "clean" install? Was the drive formatted completely and Windows reinstalled from a MS DVD/USB drive, along with all of the necessary chipset and system drivers, or.. was it a "factory reset" of some sort on a pre-built Dell machine or something? (or another manufacturer, of course)

It sounds silly, but the above are actually serious questions.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but there's far, far, FAR too many people who come to game forums making hilarious claims that this or that is broken, when in fact their system setup is what's broken. Don't misunderstand, I'm not siding with Microsoft on anything here, it's entirely possible those KB files are causing issues.. what you should be asking, however, is WHY they are causing issues for you and not for others, like myself.

This is the important question no one who comes here about launcher issues seems to want to ask themselves, and instead blames Steam and/or SEGA for a "broken launcher" when it works perfectly fine for 95% of the other users using it.

Also, both of the KB files outlined in the sticky here were installed on my system the 13th of this month.. and I have zero issues.

Thank you.

... just... thank you.

So many people fail to understand or recognize what you bring up here and it's nice to see someone that actually gets it.

[PleasantAura]

Originally posted by Requimatic:

Originally posted by Teilia:

Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes..

What logs, exactly? And did you analyze said logs yourself, or have someone else do it? (Such as folks on tech forums or something.) If you were just looking at the Event Viewer or something, it's not going to tell you the root cause of any BSOD you encounter. Just because there was a fault with GameGuard doesn't necessarily mean it was GameGuard that caused the fault.

You also mention an "otherwise clean install" of Windows. From what source did you install it? And what nature was the "clean" install? Was the drive formatted completely and Windows reinstalled from a MS DVD/USB drive, along with all of the necessary chipset and system drivers, or.. was it a "factory reset" of some sort on a pre-built Dell machine or something? (or another manufacturer, of course)

It sounds silly, but the above are actually serious questions.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but there's far, far, FAR too many people who come to game forums making hilarious claims that this or that is broken, when in fact their system setup is what's broken. Don't misunderstand, I'm not siding with Microsoft on anything here, it's entirely possible those KB files are causing issues.. what you should be asking, however, is WHY they are causing issues for you and not for others, like myself.

This is the important question no one who comes here about launcher issues seems to want to ask themselves, and instead blames Steam and/or SEGA for a "broken launcher" when it works perfectly fine for 95% of the other users using it.

Also, both of the KB files outlined in the sticky here were installed on my system the 13th of this month.. and I have zero issues.

Windows creates logfiles every time there was a crash and I looked into them, though since I've spent my afternoon reinstalling Windows and reformatting drives, I don't know if they're still around. This was a clean install of Windows 10 Pro on a PC I built myself. I regularly build PCs and know what I'm talking about in this regard; I even love this game but defending this *when there's a freaking pinned post about GameGuard causing BSODs that will be addressed in a future update* is BS. Windows 10 was installed on a new SATA 3 SSD (not one of the crap DRAM-less ones) that tests fine and has no issues; I bought it specifically for this PC. i7 2600, 8GB DDR3-1333 (single channel for the moment) RAM, GTX 1050ti. The game was installed on a secondary internal SATA 3 hard drive (spinning disk, not SSD) that I bought specifically to store games and files; it's the hard drive I've got Steam installed on.

I mean, seriously. I love this game. I have already spent money on it. I plan to spend much more time and probably money on it. The fanbase is horrible, though; people seem blindly loyal to a program that has been known to cause significant issues for literal decades. Remember that it used to be impossible to run PSO2 from the Windows Store at times because GameGuard identified necessary Windows Store processes as potential cheating software and killed them? GameGuard has been a known issue since at least PSOBB.

[PleasantAura]

Originally posted by Killance:

As this guy said. To claim it was gameguard with little evidence shows you're just trying to find a scapegoat for the issue you've had. You are indeed fearmongering.

I'm not posting the full text of my Windows logs here. How the heck is it fearmongering when it literally did what was written in the official SEGA warning about GameGuard BSODs and killed my startup files in the process? Fearmongering would be about something theoretically possible; this is an actual real thing that happened and denying reality because you really hope SEGA-senpai will acknowledge you isn't appropriate. It and Steam (well, and Discord) were literally the only programs running at the time as I disabled all other unnecessary startup processes.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Teilia:

Originally posted by Killance:

As this guy said. To claim it was gameguard with little evidence shows you're just trying to find a scapegoat for the issue you've had. You are indeed fearmongering.

I'm not posting the full text of my Windows logs here. How the heck is it fearmongering when it literally did what was written in the official SEGA warning about GameGuard BSODs and killed my startup files in the process? Fearmongering would be about something theoretically possible; this is an actual real thing that happened and denying reality because you really hope SEGA-senpai will acknowledge you isn't appropriate. It and Steam (well, and Discord) were literally the only programs running at the time as I disabled all other unnecessary startup processes.

It's the Microsoft security update, it doesn't run well with Windows 10. I mean, the damn thing was running fine for you all this time until that changed wasn't it? Don't just blindly trust propaganda, the anti-GG lobby is objecting more on words than on actual problems (i.e they are protesting because it is a "rootkit", regardless of what the actual thing does).

https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-update-rolls-out-fix-blue-screen-death-issues

Or was it the latest one that BSoD when you use certain brands of printers? Yes, that is a problem too and not from GameGuard.

And just to note, when problemsolving, you really, really, really need to be precise in your terminology. Windows 10 deleted is a lot different from having corrupted files. Corrupted files are still there, if it was a real Windows 10 delete, I can conclusively call it a Microsoft problem because Microsoft Updates will force restart your computer while GG can't. But when you said "corrupted startup files", that is very different from a delete.

You can do 2 things.
1- Rollback the update and see if it works, if so, then it's the update that is screwing you over and
2- Try running in safe mode if you know how to.

[Omega24]

if GG was really to blame i wouldnt be playing anything, and yet i am......as much as i hate to say it though you may have something lurking on your pc eating files.

[Omega24]

another thing you might try is a memory check, or run a diag.

[主​​​Miͥภgͣcͫℝ♚]

I would recommend switching windows to a Japanese locale. For the westernized port, SEGA just copied the entire JP game over and then added some modifications ontop. From my experience with programs made in Japan, western stuff breaks less frequently on western systems and Japanese stuff breaks less frequently on Japanese systems. So if they didn't recompile the entire thing (which they probably didn't), gameguard was bound to break at some point. Given it's rootkit functionality, what OP posted here seems more than plausible.

[Edgy]

welp I just updated before I started cooking food. The notification hung there for a couple of days for sure.

Wish me luck :(

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Tebjish:

welp I just updated before I started cooking food. The notification hung there for a couple of days for sure.

Wish me luck :(

Be careful, the last update was supposed to fix a BSOD issue caused when you use certain printers with Windows 10. I'd say it's a tossup on if it will fix it or just move it to something else.

[clumzylerch3000]

Originally posted by Teilia:

Well, all that "fearmongering" apparently was warranted. I didn't think it was a huge deal at first - sure, it's an awful anti-cheat, but it can't be thaaaat bad, right? - aaaaaand then it killed my entire Windows 10 installation. Apparently, per a pinned threat, the new Windows security update is causing blue screens with GameGuard, but in 37 hours of playtime this weekend, I hadn't had any issues...until today. Today, on an otherwise clean install of Windows 10, I booted up PSO2...and blue screened. Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes. Went to restart thinking it was an unfortunate coincidence, aaaand... Windows failed to start. Logs confirm that GameGuard literally corrupted my core Windows 10 startup files to the point that Windows startup repair doesn't work and I have to entirely reinstall Windows.

God, I loved the time I had with this game, but literally a day and a half after spending almost $30 on AC and buying a month of premium, it kills my entire Windows 10 installation. Ugh.

Ever since I went with steam I never had issues again. When I played on the microsoft store it was nothing but nightmares. If your not with steam I would highly suggest it.

[Alshian]

Originally posted by Requimatic:

Originally posted by Teilia:

Logs attributed it to GameGuard's processes..

What logs, exactly? And did you analyze said logs yourself, or have someone else do it? (Such as folks on tech forums or something.) If you were just looking at the Event Viewer or something, it's not going to tell you the root cause of any BSOD you encounter. Just because there was a fault with GameGuard doesn't necessarily mean it was GameGuard that caused the fault.

You also mention an "otherwise clean install" of Windows. From what source did you install it? And what nature was the "clean" install? Was the drive formatted completely and Windows reinstalled from a MS DVD/USB drive, along with all of the necessary chipset and system drivers, or.. was it a "factory reset" of some sort on a pre-built Dell machine or something? (or another manufacturer, of course)

It sounds silly, but the above are actually serious questions.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but there's far, far, FAR too many people who come to game forums making hilarious claims that this or that is broken, when in fact their system setup is what's broken. Don't misunderstand, I'm not siding with Microsoft on anything here, it's entirely possible those KB files are causing issues.. what you should be asking, however, is WHY they are causing issues for you and not for others, like myself.

This is the important question no one who comes here about launcher issues seems to want to ask themselves, and instead blames Steam and/or SEGA for a "broken launcher" when it works perfectly fine for 95% of the other users using it.

Also, both of the KB files outlined in the sticky here were installed on my system the 13th of this month.. and I have zero issues.

I wish more people like you are plentiful around here ; w ;

Thank you.