Borderlands 2 Launcher Failure

[Sunglasses@Night]

I originally posted this to Community Support. Reposting here.

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I've googled every thread on this I could find, and tried all suggestions with no resolution. So here I am, posting for the first time!

Trying to start Borderlands 2 results in nothing; no error message, no response at all, I just get a brief Sync flash by the library title. According to my event viewer:

1. Source: .Net Runtime
Application: Launcher.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.BadImageFormatException
Stack:
at Launcher.App..ctor()
at Launcher.App.Main()

Then right after that

2. Source: Application error
Faulting application name: Launcher.exe_Borderlands 2 launcher, version: 1.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5395f536
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18869, time stamp: 0x556363bc
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x0000c42d
Faulting process id: 0x1440
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0b11e342a9d04
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Borderlands 2\Binaries\Win32\Launcher.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 7279bb7e-1d11-11e5-8edc-448a5b9dabf2

I have done the following steps with reboots between each:

1. uninstalled all VC Redist files then re-installed from BL2 Redist folder (the first few failures had an "installing VC Redist" message before stopping; no more such messages now, it just skips to the stop
2. uninstalled BL2, re-installed
3. Uninstalled/reinstalled Steam
4. Uninstalled .Net Framework, then installed the version in BL2 Redist
5. Updated back to 4.5.2 per Windows auto update recommendations
6. Made sure Borderlands 2\Binaries\Win32 > steam_appid.txt was present and correctly contained 49520
7. Ran with -NoLauncher in the Set Launch Options. Many times. I'd switch between them for each step
8. Re-installed my video card software/drivers. I have an NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti card

At this point, the only clue I can see is in 'Framework Version: v4.0.30319' in Event 1. My .net framework is of a higher version (4.5.2), and doesn't work on either version.

Oh, one other step:

9. I opened launcher.exe.config and got the below.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0,Profile=Client"/></startup></configuration>

I tried changing both v.4.0 to v4.5.51209 and got this error message when trying to start:

This application requires one of the following versions of the .NET Framework:
.NetFramework, Version=v4.5.51209,Profile=Client
Do you want to install this .NET Framework version now?

Saying "Yes" takes me to the MS homepage. Changing just one (I tried both combos), same error message. Interesting, though, that those failures didn't result in any events according to the logs.

Ideas, anyone? I'm all out of them.

[Sunglasses@Night]

Update/additional info: now a whole bunch of games (anything graphically intensive) fail to launch, without even the courtesy of an event log on any but Borderlands. When trying to run from launcher or game .exe I get an error 0x000007b.

The main change between everything working vs. only low intensity games was a video card update (was NVIDIA Geforce 630, now is the newer and better Geforce 750ti). Nothing I've done with the drivers (including uninstalling/reinstalling ALL nvidia-related programs including drivers) has had any effect at all.

I really do not want to have to format/reinstall windows over a video card UPGRADE, but man it's starting to look necessary.

[z00t]

It might be that a recent Windows update has caused this. It is not unknown for things like this to happen when updates break things. :(

[Sunglasses@Night]

Thanks z00t. Hopefully if that's the case they fix it.

[z00t]

I hope you get it sorted out. Being without Borderlands would be.... aaaaargh.

[Sunglasses@Night]

I eventually resolved this by re-installing Windows 7. Then changing the RAM because a stick turned out to be bad. A lot of non-BL related errors were occuring, including crashes, so the issue doesn't appear to have been with the game at all. Good to see the problem solved though, with Borderlands back to amazing!

[z00t]

Bad memory was the cause? Unusual. Hardware these days is pretty reliable generally. Glad to hear it is sorted out now, and Pandora is again a wonderful place to visit. :)

[Sunglasses@Night]

Well, the RAM was causing BL2 and most other games to crash within ~30 minutes or so of playtime, but whatever the hell was causing the game to just not start at all was fixed with a re-install. The error codes associated with the crash are, according to the many tech forums I checked, often related to bad memory, but the software mystifies me still.

But yeah, I just spent like 30 hours over the past week shooting bandits. Good to be back in :-D