"Sir, a loyal 11-bit customer has been trying for days to get Frostpunk to work with his desktop system to no avail. He is frustrated and dismayed and demands satisfaction. What shall we do?"

All right, I'll give the specs of my rig right up front before I delve into it.

Windows 7 64-bit SP-1
Intel Core i5 4670K 3.40 GHz Haswell 4-core
8 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT 740 GT 2 GB video RAM

The graphics card is a new addition I bought specifically, and solely, to play Frostpunk. I fell in love with This War of Mine and it's one of my favorite games of all time. That game had no problem playing on an average laptop, which is what I use most of the time for both work/play and most everything internet related. I'm not a hardcore gamer interested in AAA titles or most newer games; I'm strictly into newer indie titles that launch on GOG or older formerly big-name games from the 90s--mid-00s era roughly, that GOG so lovely curates and re-releases on their platform, Criterion Collection-like, making me a loyal customer for life.

Every single thing I've tried results in the same result; I can initially launch the game, it loads up the main menu, but upon clicking "A New Home" it loads for a few seconds then crashes to desktop with the same error message each time:

APPCRASH in Frostpunk.exe

This particular desktop usually sits in place without access to internet, which I use stricly as a movie/music repository and for some offline gaming (again, thanks GOG). So after connecting it to a LAN and going through an intensive cycle of updating and troubleshooting, here is a list of everything I have tried:

Updated every single obsolete driver on my machine and updated to each and every current windows patch, important and optional. Tried most up-to-date video drivers, as well as slightly older ones. Used "Display Driver Uninstaller" (DDU) for this process.

Re-installing DirectX runtime packages, and un-installing/re-installing several different Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages, both x86 and x64 versions (2010, 2013, 2017). This fixed the missing MSVCP120.dll and MSVCP140.dll error messages, however not my ultimate problem.

Installed the KB4019990 update manually that causes the "d3dcompiler_47.dll is missing" error. Again, this fixed one issue, but not the most vital one. For good measure, also manually updated the KB2670838 update (the Windows 7 "Platform Update") too I've seen listed as a recommended fix in some places.

Re-installing .NET framework to latest version (4.7.1).

Turned off "Virtual Memory" in the system settings of Control Panel. Also changing my paging file to a custom size in the same system properties.

Turned of anti-aliasing in the GeForce control panel (all this did was take away my visual, the game launched with sound only).

Run game as administrator.

Run game in windowed mode.

Fiddling with all the settings on the main menu "settings" screen. Changing any of the options available made no difference: Resolution, vsync, GFX level, window or full-screen.

I even ran the silly "GeForce Experience" utility than came with the driver disc that was mailed with my graphics card, to try to "optimize" the game. It, however, could never find Frostpunk on my machine, even when I specifically pointed it to the directory, which I can only surmise has to do with this being the GOG version of the game, and not STEAM. For the record I tried launching the game with and without this utility installed (it's separate from the device driver), and the game crashes either way,

No Dice. Hope falls. Discontent Rises.

From my intensive scouring of forums and the internet it seems these launch problems are linked to compatibility issues with GeForce graphics cards. If that is the case I would have bought a Radeon AMD card in a heartbeat, and am now kicking myself for not (I timed my online order to coincide with release day--I had no way of knowing). It's been several years since I really bothered to buy a graphics card and I think I chose GeForce just because I've used them in the past. I didn't want an ultra-cheap card nor the newest, latest, greatest and most expensive card because, like I said, I bought it solely to play Frostpunk (basically turning a $30 purchase into a $130 one), and just needed one to meet the minimum requirements and then some, enough to comfortably run it on medium-ish settings.

Now, I *have* been able to play Frostpunk in some regard--specifically, believe it or not, on my daily home laptop that isn't a gaming laptop by any means. It's an i5Core 5200 2.20 2-core ASUS laptop, same OS as desktop (Win7 64-bit) that runs--get ready--integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics. Nowhere *near* recommended system specs for this game.

And yet! I was able to get the game to install and play, actually straight after the GOG installer was done, no additional tinkering required.

Even on the bare minimum low graphic settings it's barely functional. To say it plays at a crawl is an insult to the long-suffering denizens of your city with amputated limbs who hobble along at a legitimate crawl. Horrifically jerky, obscenely stuttering, snail-like zooming and camera rotation.

And yet it is an utterly enthralling, engrossing single-player experience, and I loved every minute of it to bits. Absorbing, atmospheric, ambient, challenging, provocative. Name your adjective--it nails it.

But eventually even I, tolerant and obsessive as I am with this game, had to stop because the game was simply *TOO* unplayable after awhile after you have erected major hubs of industry and housing at around the 20-day mark.

So if anyone reads this, thanks for reading thus far, and if there is some innovative solution out there someone can cook up, I'm all ears and will be forever grateful. Until then I guess all I can do is (a) wait for a patch to hammer out this launch problems or (b) return my graphics card and go with a Radeon instead.

Addendum: As AMD GPU users also are suffering the exact same crashes, I'm probably SOL until 11-bit releases a patch for Windows 7/8 users. Really hope Rufus Blackwood and the rest of the 11-bit read these forums.

What OS has that laptop?

Same as the desktop: Win7 x64 SP1.

Is that the only thing that's displayed? Is there any error code?

I do not have the game so I can't check this (it's too pricey for me atm) but maybe there is some error log file in game directory?

What kind of GeForce drivers have you installed? Original ones directly from nvidia or from card manufacturer?

Have you tried to install only pure drivers (without any addons like GF experience)?

Here is the log file of the crash:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Frostpunk.exe
Application Version: 0.1.0.38721
Application Timestamp: 5ade889f
Fault Module Name: Frostpunk.exe
Fault Module Version: 0.1.0.38721
Fault Module Timestamp: 5ade889f
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000000000342279
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: a510
Additional Information 2: a510d7d4dde14602fbd678ed3778119d
Additional Information 3: cb14
Additional Information 4: cb147334583d0926be24acaa7e49ff6d

The driver disc for my graphics card had a slightly older driver from 2014. I tried running Frostpunk with that driver, without GeForce "Experience," and it wouldn't. I updated to the latest Nvidia driver, 397.31 WHQL driver that was released a couple days ago, which specifically lists "Frostpunk" as one of the news games the driver is optimized for, and Frostpunk still won't work. GeForce "Experience" has no bearing on getting it to work, and in my case, as I already noted in the original post, it can't even "find" the game.

Have you done full clean drivers reinstall using DDU or something similar? It does not matter if GFE sees the game or not. If it's installed it still can cause conflicts - that's why I asked about pure driver without any addons (custom driver installation needs to be selected for that).

Uninstalling "GeForce Experience" completely and then restarting windows has no effect on the same APPCRASH error I get.

Have you used DDU (or something similar) at some stage of driver reinstallation?

You said, you bought new gfx card, have you reinstalled drivers/Windows after that?

On this suggestion, I installed DDU and removed Geforce Experience from its control panel (just in case the regular uninstall somehow didn't get all of it). I then removed my installed Nvidia driver, reboot, and installed Nvidia 391.35, the driver released last month just before the current one (just in case the most current driver was buggy).

Didn't work, exact same main menu, then crash on new game.

Then I used DDU again to remove driver 391.35 and re-installed the latest driver again this time (397.31). Reboot.

No difference, same crash.

I'm *NOT* re-installing windows on this machine. It's utterly absurd such a step should be required of me to get Frostpunk to work. I've never seen it suggested anywhere else, and I've already tried all the usual windows updates, drivers, Visual C++ packages, DirectX, .net Framework and everything else I listed in my OP. I've already tried re-installing the game several times between updates, and have tried it both before and after, unsuccessfully (and this desktop was functioning perfectly well with all my programs, utilities and games beforehand even with some obsolete dirvers and not all the latest windows updates).

It'll take the better part of a full day for me to reinstall windows and update everything back to way it was, including re-installing all my preferred programs, utilities, and games. I'm 99.9% sure this will accomplish jack shit and Frostpunk will give me the same crash and same error message. Windows 7 can't be at fault since the game does run on my laptop (albeit atrociously).

I did not ask about Windows reinstallation just because of Frostpunk.
I did ask because you upgraded your card.

What was your previous card? Nvidia or AMD one?

There was no old GPU in this desktop, just the Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics.

I've come to the conclusion that 11-bit just has severe optimization and compatibility issues with certain Nvidia cards and Frostpunk that weren't debugged before release and can't be overcome, until patched, and god knows when that will be. I happen to be one of the unlucky ones for whatever reason--I probably chose a poor card for this game in the first place.

I think I'll just re-sell it on ebay, take a slight financial hit, and then try to buy a decent used AMD Radeon card on there.

I've heard about a few cases of "something is not working right" when the system used iGPU for a longer period of time and "suddenly" got upgraded with normal GPU. It was "magically" fixed with OS reinstall while having iGPU fully disabled.

I can't say if that's your case but nobody can exclude that. I do not know if there is something like DDU for iGPU but maybe it would be worth to look for.

It will not help you as I've seen similar Frostpunk crash reports from AMD users as well.

There is also an option that the card you bought is a faulty one - I suppose it was a used one, not new.

No, regrettably, this one was new.

My options seem to have boiled down to: (a) purchase more RAM for this desktop to round it out to 16 GB--one person said he would have problems getting certain games on run on Win7 no matter what he tried until he bought more RAM for that particular machine, though that still doesn't explain how my laptop, also running Win7 64-bit with 8 GB RAM, could run Frostpunk (albeit atrociously). (b) Wait for a patch to hammer out issues, (b) try re-instalilng Windows, be it 7/8/10 and see if a fresh OS install works, or (c) try a different GPU, like AMD Radeon in case this is a Nvidia-specific problem, though none of any of these are guarantees obviously, with the exception of some future compatibility patch.

I am having exactly the same problems that you are having with two AMD cards. The game will crash when launching with both a Radeon 7790 and an RX 570. It's not just nVidia cards.

Well my friend, I guess we're both shit-out-of-luck, until a patch comes through. I've installed plenty of horrendously buggy 1.0 game releases before, but never had as much problem getting the game to even *run* as I have with Frostpunk.