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DWU worked fine until a few weeks ago. Seems Windows 10 has had massive updates, and DWU will not get past the game menu screen. Click on update, and that works. Click on play, and nothing happens. Drivers seem to be updated. I have uninstalled and reinstalled 6 times. Help.

did you reinstall all of the pre requisites?

if yes, then enable this now as well




as without the pre requisites and direct play, the game won't work either on windows 10

As far as I can tell all prerequisites are installed. Ran fine about a month ago. Direct play is enabled.

if you run any of them again, it only repairs and over writes, doesn't make any newer ones to be sure i'd do that, then check your AV (anti virus) logs to see if anything there has been blocked, then check gaming logs for errors.

Please check if you have any file named DW_CrashDump.txt and attach it to your post. You can find that file at your Windows documents folder at:
....\Documents\My Games\Distant Worlds Universe

DW Crash dump file

Check this thread:
tm.asp?m=3620855

Reloaded every C++ redistributable I could find. Reloaded DXSETUP.exe, dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe, and xnafx40_redist.msi, expect dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe, which said it was already installed and would not allow a reload. This game worked a month ago, and the only changes ahve been several Windows 10 updates and I switched to Norton AV. The AV log shows nothing around the times I have tried to run DWU.

Latest DW crash dump.

The solution is related with WMP and IE.
"On a whim I removed them both, deleted DW, restarted, reinstalled, restarted, reinstalled DW... and like magic, it worked. IDK, maybe one of the 300 windows updates I just installed went pear shaped and screwed something up. "

Control Panel > Programs and Features > Windows Features > Media Features > Windows Media Player
Control Panel > Programs and Features > Windows Features > Internet Explorer 11

My version of Windows 10 must be different.
Control Panel>Programs>Programs and Features>Turn Windows Features on or off
from there I see Media Features is checked, but I cannot click on it to see what is in Media Features
Above this is something called Direct Play, and it is checked

Above that is Internet Explorer 11 and it is checked.

No idea how to remove and reinstall either of them, as neither show up on the uninstall program page.

here you go




can do both from here, then same to put them back in again

where to find

My page under manage optional features has IE 11, but not Windows Media Player

Found install, shall see if it works.

Once I figured out how to reinstall Windows Media Player all is well. Problem solved. Somehow in the flurry of updates of late WMP got deleted. Thanks for your help!

glad your sorted, now you can get back to enjoying your game