I've been happy with imdisk. And there's an extra tool kit for an auto-mount ramdrive which also sets the temp directories to the ramdrive.

Dynamic ram drive is workable.... But if you don't need much of a ramdrive setting a fixed say 2Gb for temporary files is probably better, as it will be adding or removing space from the ram drive as you go if you do dynamic. (And by dynamic, i have say 26 of my 32Gb set, but it only allocates what it needs at the time, and running ffmpeg can eat a ton of ram, FHD AV1 encoding about 4-5Gb).

https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit - pretty sure includes the driver.

imdisk driver only

Only stipulation with using dynamic ramdrive is if you do file compression there could be memory leaks; but using AWE physical memory option set i didn't see that problem (Your mileage may vary), so i'll sometimes decompress files, then file NTFS compress (like unity games), then have enough memory left over to still do 7zip high compression (using 10Gb ram) on very large directory trees when repacking.

Thanks. imdisk was actually what I used back then. It was stable, but quite limited then, I see they made some improvements.

I appreciate people trying to offer alternative solutions, but it's still mind-boggling to me how a client feature simply does not work at all.

I have the same issue with most games - I have the auto-update feature turned off but Galaxy completely ignores it and constantly tries to download stuff on its own. How did this make it to production/through testing?

I only use offline installers but I still like to open Galaxy sometimes to organize the library (mark games as completed, assign tags or rating, etc.), and when I do, I have to manually cancel downloads every time, even though - as I said - I turned off auto-update in Galaxy settings.

Absolutely ridiculous.

I wish I could recommend upgrading to Galaxy 1.2... Sadly it's a process and probably becoming insecure. But Galaxy 1.2 was actually functional and was in every way better than Galaxy 2. Including respecting not updating and skipping DLC... Except of course, and I'm certain Galaxy 2 is still this way, at install it always automatically is latest version, everything (with cloud sync on). You can't set it to install the old version or install without DLC or to not do cloud sync the first time. But it properly respects your current settings when it detects and offline install like you did. Plus it supports features Galaxy 2 doesn't, like sorting your library by most recent, has a sensible UI compared to 2, and doesn't advertise DRMed games on other platforms to you.

Yeah, I think I'll just skip using a client altogether and manage the games (tags, ratings, etc) from the library on the website/account instead.

Maybe one day they will have a client that hopefully works and that has features that do as advertised.
Offline installers are absolutely fine and give me full control over which parts of the games I want installed.

Here is what should work (see attached):

In GOG Galaxy client select your game and click on Settings (a little icon to the right of Play button)
Select: Manage installation > Configure > DLCs and there you may remove those DLCs you don't want to have installed

Check how it works and let us know if it helps.

See attached example for Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition and its various DLCs.

Check his screenshots.

Maybe reinstalling it after these settings were made would help.

Back in the Windows 95/98 days, i used a different ramdisk, i'd have to look it up, but i wrote an assembly based tool to rip the drive from memory to a file, and load from file to memory and be ready for use. Though, naturally that would be considerably smaller. Though you could have a massive amount of memory dedicated to the ramdrive while the allowed OS amount is left to the OS.

If you're interested let me know. But doesn't seem that useful today.

Ah, my bad. I didn't check the 3rd screen.

Thanks, but I think I'll stick with IMD for now.

Hi, sorry for my solution which you already checked on your own (attached file #3), if it make you feel any better I remember launching a game under GOG Galaxy, I think it was Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas, or maybe it was Thief 4 (not sure which game, but definitely not Fallout 4 since I don't own it on GOG).

And I wanted to play the vanilla base game first and check the DLC content later (if it was Thief 4, I wanted to play the real game and not the overpowered version of it). But I had the very same issue back then, with DLCs reapplying automatically no matter what my Galaxy settings are, so I had to play the game on Steam instead. Don't remember anyone complaining about it and since my GOG Galaxy client was/is very outdated I decided to ignore the whole thing.

So it seems it's a problem which was not unique and still is not resolved. I suggest to check and post first here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general_beta_gog_galaxy_2.0#1696540205

Then book a ticket for GOG tech support.

OP here, i've managed to find a temporary solution whilst I wait for support to get back to me.

i uninstalled the game and reinstalled it offline in my local games folder instead of the gog galaxy one, and i changed the settings for gog galaxy so that it does not turn on with startup, so as long as i haven't opened galaxy myself i can just start the game and not worry about it trying to update.

of course as soon as i open galaxy i have to be quick to stop the download from happening. hopefully support will be back with me soon and i can uncouple the dlc from the game.

I have this problem for pretty much every game regardless of whether it's completely installed already. I have no idea what it's trying to 'update'. My workaround is:
1. Disconnect internet.
2. Rename install folder.
3. In Gog Galaxy, 'uninstall' the game. It will error out since the folder is renamed.
4. Close Galaxy.
5. Rename install folder back.
From now on, Galaxy won't think it's installed and won't try downloading whatever it is trying to download. If you care about achievements and time tracking, though, the above won't be a suitable solution.

In general, I've found Galaxy to be increasingly buggy over the last few years. With BG3, it completely has no idea what the download size of offline installers are and displays something random. However, it will actually download the correct file. First time I've encountered this issue. I'd raise a support ticket but turn around times are so long that it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

OP here, thanks for everyone's help!

I got in contact with support and, after trying and failing literally every option other than just getting rid of the DLC, they finally manually removed the DLC from my account.

And having the DLC removed fixed my problem, funnily enough.

It was definitely a struggle though, we went through literally every other possible solution, and it took 15 emails back and forth.

My suggestion would be to go to support and ask directly for a DLC removal, rather than what I did which was approach it in a 'downloading issue' kind of way.

It's a bummer that it can only really be fixed by going to support, but a temporary solution is to disable GOG Galaxy on startup via Task Manager and then being quick on the draw when you open Galaxy.

Hopefully this can help others if they get the same problem, and even more hopefully Galaxy will be fixed so that this isn't a problem in the first place.