Hello everyone!

Quite a while ago I bought the witcher 3, but I never got to play it. A few weeks ago I dreamt about me playing it so thats like god saying "play this game, naow!". And all of my friends who played recommend it as well.

But I'm having some issues. Galaxy doesn't work and wasted too many hours trying to fix it (see first picture)

Translation: Program can't be run because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll isn't installed on my pc. (as a matter of fact it is, but anyways)

So I've given up trying to fix this, and am looking for other ways to play.

Second picture: is this the only way I can download the witcher without galaxy? I have to download & install a hundred parts? Isn't there some "download all" button or something? Because installing every single part and installing them in order doesn't work as well, I tried.

To be honest, I'm getting really sick of all this. I have a decent computer but almost every tripple A game I bought I can't play, for example Guild Wars 2, Star Wars Battlefront and now The Witcher 3. I've wasted countless hours trying to play games I paid a lot of money for. I'm never having any troubles like this with steam. Its almost like I have to limit my games to the steam shop, which is incredibly frustrating.

Greetings from Switzerland and thanks for any help in advance!

Tom

You can use the downloader: https://www.gog.com/downloader
It's not maintained and officially supported anymore, but it still does work.
Go to you library, click the More button and choose 'GOG Downloader Links'.
There's 1 link for the installer (per OS) and 1 for the extras. If you have the expansions, there's also a link for that.

Thank you for the quick answer, but the downloader doesn't work either, it doesn't even start.

I'm no pc expert, but I'd guess (part of) your Windows installation got damaged.

I've set my pc up a few months ago and had no issues except for the mentioned games. I'm really not willing to set it up again (= even more hours trying to fix stuff that should work from the beginning) just to be able to play Witcher 3.

Or do I even have a choice? I won't get my money back, pretty sure of that.

I wonder why this problem is not better described by GOG as it is fairly common.
You have Windows 7 wich is not updated, if you somehow make it update through windows update GOG Galaxy will work. There is a quicker solution w/o updating, just install this single update from MS official site:
support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2999226
(there is a link for direct download and install for this single update).

Note: restart PC and reinstall GOG galaxy after update.

One little detail when you install single update like this it should isntall pretty fast, if it seems to hang and not install for long time you just need to stop/disable the windows update service - this is a common problem.

After trying that my desperation is even bigger lol. Manually installing doesnt work (error 0x80080005 - I'll have to look up whatever that is)

Windows Update on the control panel is extremely slow. When I try to search for new updates it says Windows Update isn't enabled, even though it IS - on a daily basis. There seems to be some kind of Windows Update troubleshooter, but I was only able to find the one for Win 10.

Edit: I just searched more than half an hour for this troubleshooter. Where the hell can I find that thing? Windows webpages not being helpful at all, as usual.

Well, Windows Update on Win 7 (and 8/8.1) is pretty awkward nowadays. Just look this up. Yesterday, I installed KB3177467 and KB3172605 and now my update works again, after quite some downtime.

Aside from that; lets get back to basics: what did you do/try after buying the game and in which order did you do it?

Normally, one would download the installer and the seven corresponding .bin files (archives). After that, you simply install the game and the necessary libraries from Microsoft should be installed as well.

And that should be it. Normally, of course.

Like the rest I recommend you using GOG downloader instead. You will get the full game without any other game client overlay.

If you don't care about achievements then this is also for you.

I'll try to fix it that way sometime this week, thank you very much for your input!

It's been like a year since I've bought the game, I honestly can't remember all the things I tried. But it was mostly downloading Windows stuff and trying to fix GOG Galaxy.

@thelostdunmer

GOG downloader crashes when I try to start it.

No need to use Galaxy or the GOG Downloader. You can simply use the listed hotlinks on the game page in your account to direct download.

But it does sound like there are other, more general issues with your Operating System.

It seems you got a faulty Windows install. You may want to restore it to factory default. Just don't forget to backup your gave saves preferably in a separate hardisk.

EDIT:
Allready been posted......