Would love to join in, but...

So, I thought I'd give the expansion a whirl. Arc wouldn't load the game right, so I uninstalled and reinstalled Arc. Then jumped through several hoops several times over to get the game running. I've had it stall out on the Loading screen--one reason I haven't played in months is that I can't get into the game no matter which of the 37 googled fixes I try. Now there's a new thing it does: Once in the loading screen, it crashes outright. Crashed twice already, gonna see if the third time is the charm. Since I'm planning on writing a review for a gaming publication, this doesn't bode well for the review.

After this new check-all-the-files-and-restart, I got a new message that looked like a game crash, but this time it said there were missing files. Um...?

Hmm, when the launch window pops up, asking you to enter your username and password, hit the options button at the top right corner of the window. Check the 'force verify' button and let it check all of the game files. This might help.

Tomorrow, they're doing extended maintenance on the game - maybe that'll fix the problem? Short of that, I think you may need to try an uninstall and reinstall of the game itself, rather than just the Arc client.

Hope you're able to get in :(

Thanks for the advice. I'll try it tomorrow.

Also...

Load the launcher.. plop in your password etc... and before launch, click options..
click safe mode..
Than launch the game.
hopefully when/if the game loads to your character select screen...
click options again...
go onto the graphics tab
make sure "Reduce file streaming" is ticked ON

it helped me when loading screens caused game crashes on my PC

(if you've tried that approach already forgive me)

Rather than type it all over again, I'll just link some of my earlier tech advice for another fleetie with crash issues. There are explicit directions for bypassing the Arc launcher and loading only STO itself, as well as how to perform a full and clean remove/reinstall of the game.

TOPIC: Crashes and a virus

Hope it helps.


PS: If you're running AVG, either get rid of it and use something else or at minimum add the STO folder and EXE to the scanning exceptions. AVG and STO do not play well together.

Trying the advice of opening the game directly from STO rather than Arc. Stuck in a big patch at the moment but I'll keep you posted.

So I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Star Trek Online, but when I try to pull it up in Control Panel, it doesn't show itself as being accessible for uninstall. So then I tried the trick of pulling the STO starter out of the Programs folder and putting it on the desktop. When I started from there, same problems as before. But one thing I realize now--each time it crashes, it does so just after I open the Task Manager to see what's going on. Doesn't make sense that the Task Manager would crash the game, but.

Now that the game is on the desktop instead of buried, I'm going to see if I can uninstall/reinstall from there.

Still not showing up on the Control Panel as uninstallable.

Any help on getting the game uninstalled? I'm running Windows 10. Thanks.

So I thought I would ask someone in STO chat through Neverwinter chat, assuming that both games still share chat. I did the same thing where I moved the Neverwinter start onto the desktop, patched for over a freakin' hour, and the game opened up in a very small window; I must have been running it with something else the last time I was in game. So I tried going to full-screen, and then *that* crashed Neverwinter! Makes me wonder if the problem is that I can't play any PWE game in full-screen. And of course neither of these games show up in the Uninstall panel, so. And Googling how to uninstall STO in Windows 10 gives me nothing.

Bah...

Apologies if the following has already been suggested. Have you tried running STO in windowed mode?

Do you know which directory the game was installed in? It's no guarantee due to the existence of the horror known as the Windows Registry, but you might try completely deleting the game directory and then downloading the game from scratch.

OK I'm also running in W10 so it should be installed under Program Files (x86)\Arc.

If it's not showing up in Control Panel (the real thing, not that useless POS called the Settings app), then you should be safe to straight up SHIFT-DEL the Arc program folder and reinstall.

As for the registry, you could launch REGEDT32.EXE and try going into HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\ and deleting the Cryptic and Perfect World Platform Client folders you should find there prior to launching the reinstall.

Of course if you're not comfortable hacking the registry, then DON'T. But if you choose to do what I listed above, make sure to reboot the PC before attempting the reinstall.

Quote by Teknomancer

OK I'm also running in W10 so it should be installed under Program Files (x86)\Arc.

If it's not showing up in Control Panel (the real thing, not that useless POS called the Settings app), then you should be safe to straight up SHIFT-DEL the Arc program folder and reinstall.

As for the registry, you could launch REGEDT32.EXE and try going into HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\ and deleting the Cryptic and Perfect World Platform Client folders you should find there prior to launching the reinstall.

Of course if you're not comfortable hacking the registry, then DON'T. But if you choose to do what I listed above, make sure to reboot the PC before attempting the reinstall.

Is there any way to break this down into a number of little steps, complete with screenshots? Honestly, a lot of what you wrote reads like gibberish to me because I'm that untechnical.

Heading off to work, but I'll try to get you a step-by-step later today.

Since it might be needed again, I compiled all of the various troubleshooting tips into a standalone post for easy reference and forum search. This stuff should really all be in one place rather than scattered around individual posts whenever someone has an issue.

TOPIC: Advanced STO Troubleshooting