Request for help: Launching the Game

[Arhane]

Hello Folks!

Long time player, long time lurker here. Encountered an unexpected problem which seems to persist no matter what I try to do. Since I do not expect any help from blizzard, so writing here in case anyone has encountered anything similar and may offer tips on how to solve this.

Long story short: cannot launch Warcraft 3:Reforged or other legal, more recent versions (however, can launch very old pirated versions).

When I press "play" in BNet launcher, the button becomes "launching" for 1 sec and then reverts to "play" as if nothing have happened.
With the non-reforged legacy versions of various patches, the game would simply not launch. I could only launch 1.26 versions...

Things I tried so far:
Reinstalling graphic drivers, trying different versions, etc.
Reinstalling windows
Purging Windows registry
And other things I have found recommended online

My specs:

• OS: Windows 10
• CPU: AMD Ryzen (K19, 12 cores)
• RAM: 32 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU (4 GB, Lenovo)
• Motherboard: Lenovo LNVNB161216 (Notebook)
• Display: 1920×1080 @ 165Hz

My own suspicion that it has something to do with video card, as some other games which should launch also does not launch. That being said, I used to play reforged on crappy computers, and I still can launch much more demanding games on the current one.

 

[Ravager16829]

I haven't played Reforged just yet, but I can tell you all of those tricks you used, including even restarting laptop/PC, have almost ZERO effect on most issues with Reforged (or even the other games), from my observation. However, it's always worth a shot to try. Additionally, Reforged (or pre-Reforged legacy versions like 1.26 or 1.31) doesn't seem to like overlay-related apps (like MSI Afterburner, etc.).

As stupid as this sounds, Windows Defender (or your preferred AV) might also intervene, though for me with my own AV (ESET NOD32) it has been pretty smooth.

As a last resort, Windows Event Viewer provides any kind of crash logs if the app doesn't launch. You might want try checking out first.

UPDATE: Few people suggest that disabling Windows Exploit Protection helps to resolve this.

 

[Retera]

Seems weird, Reforged always worked for me on Windows, even on the ghetto PC that I bought from a guy down the street without realizing his shop was closed who looked at me in a sad and tired way and still sold me the PC.

Older versions of the game used to create log files reporting what went wrong in some of the game folders. By the 1.32 era they had likely replaced this with code that sends crash information to Blizzard instead of putting it on your computer, but if you try Patch 1.29 it might be old enough that it might still make log files on your hard drive. Have you tried that? Basically if you launch the game, and then it doesn't open like you said, after doing that I would go and check Documents/Warcraft III/ and just surf around that folder and look for Errors/ folder anywhere. See if you can find a file whose "Last Modified" date matches the time that you tried to launch the game, but it didn't open. If you find a log file there, try uploading it to thread to see if people can extract any info from it.

it's a rather long shot, but might be worth trying.

Something else that I personally would try -- but most people probably would not bother with -- is this video here:

Warsmash is an incomplete but open-source rewrite of the code of Warcraft III and so it runs completely differently. If it also will not open and run, then because I wrote most of that code I could help with more in-depth diagnosis about hardware issues. If it does pop open and run, that's unfortunate then it would mean something is wrong with Reforged moreso than the computer.

 

[Dawncrest]

Have you found a solution? My friend has ran into the same issue but hasn't done anything as drastic as reinstalling windows yet

 

[Arhane]

After about 8-hour session with ChatGPT trying to do all things imaginable, I failed to launch the game. I fixed numerous other issues though and even upgraded my windows to 11, but Reforged remains out of reach.

Blizzard did not engage with the ticket, it did not reach engineers and was closed after couple days.

 

[Ravager16829]

After about 8-hour session with ChatGPT trying to do all things imaginable, I failed to launch the game. I fixed numerous other issues though and even upgraded my windows to 11, but Reforged remains out of reach.

Blizzard did not engage with the ticket, it did not reach engineers and was closed after couple days.

Have you tried playing the other games than Warcraft 3? If it's not working, I guess there's something wrong with my laptop.

Event Viewer might be useful. If the game isn't running, Windows might display some kind of error log upon crashing.

 

[bi_a_op]

Reinstalling windows

Jeez

Have you checked the wc3 folder for error logs?

 

[Ravager16829]

Have you checked the wc3 folder for error logs?

And Event Viewer as well.

Usually, when the program/game won't start without actual error message, Windows might display some kind of error log through Event Viewer upon crashing. Some Warcraft III: Reforged users encountered similar problems, and the issue was exactly same, something related to "ntdll" stuff.

 

[Arhane]

Yup, did all those (praise GPT), and was trying to fix on what info logs provided, with no success. I forgot the exact issues ChatGPT was thinking were the culprit by now, based on those logs.

I had trouble launching other games (apparently due to Win 10 issues), such as BG3, Elden Ring etc., but I can play them all without any problem on high specs after updating to Win11. The only game I cannot play is Reforged.

 

[Ravager16829]

I had trouble launching other games (apparently due to Win 10 issues), such as BG3, Elden Ring etc., but I can play them all without any problem on high specs after updating to Win11. The only game I cannot play is Reforged.

I have no idea how to fix this problem. I haven't played Reforged just yet.

And yes, any questions not related to Warcraft III like that one shouldn't be posted here.

 

[bi_a_op]

And Event Viewer as well.

Usually, when the program/game won't start without actual error message, Windows might display some kind of error log through Event Viewer upon crashing. Some Warcraft III: Reforged users encountered similar problems, and the issue was exactly same, something related to "ntdll" stuff.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here.
But the wc3 folder has got its own folder for error logs. Even though it looks like nothing launches, it may still be logging the events.

 

[Dawncrest]

I don't know if this is still an issue for you but a little update on my friend's situation who had a similar issue. Disabling Control Flow Guard did it for him. Following one with the same error code.

[SOLVED] Game not starting on Windows 10 without error message

SOLVED ERROR: ntdll.dll crash with exception code c0000409 SOLUTION: Turn off Exploit Protection in Windows If you don’t want to disable it totally, you can try do custom rules for single .exe file (but in my case only total disabling worked): 1-In windows search bar type Exploit...

eu.forums.blizzard.com

 

[Ravager16829]

I remember testing Reforged on my Windows 11 PC before rolling back to Windows 10 few weeks ago, and it worked without much problem. Though most Windows 11 users also ran into this problem, and apparently fixed that by doing that "Control Flow Guard" stuff like someone posted. They should put this information somewhere where anybody would notice; then again it's Blizzard's fault. Anyway thanks for the info.

 

[Arhane]

Well, this actually worked for me! Two years of trying different things... Thanks a lot!