Hello,
I just tried to continue a STA2 with the second last Borg mission. But I cannot start an
y game at all. WTF is going on???

Probably the best place to find help:
https://www.gog.com/forum/star_trek_armada_ii#1679769594

Yeah, I posted there so,ething as well.

However, it is not the only game that does not start. In fact most games do not start.

You noticed an update recently? Windows or video drivers? Because that'd be the biggest culprits I'd be investigating. Unless you uninstalled a dependency like a VC++ package.

Checked Event Viewer? Any error messages there specifically to do with the games you are trying to run?

Are you using the galaxy client? If so, you don't need it to access your games.

Use the normal game installers from your account.
https://www.gog.com/en/account

Scroll down past the blue galaxy banner to see the game installers.

Hope that helps.

Posting alone won't solve it. Reading what other people posted about the same problem might.

If "an error" happened, there is "a solution". More info is needed to see what went wrong.
Check your windows event log to see if the game crashed. HTF would that help with a game crashing on startup. Galaxy installs just the same files ... Your agenda is really getting old. You don't like Galaxy, we get it. But offline installers are not the solution for EVERY problem.

No, he's not wrong for suggesting ruling it out at all given that posts like this exist in the game-specific forum:-

"Sometimes it won't launch though GOG Galaxy even after following those steps, it will have the exact same behaviour instantly crashing to desktop. Either browse to the installation folder and launch the Armada2.exe or use the desktop shortcut and it should launch."
https://www.gog.com/forum/star_trek_armada_ii/game_wont_start/post37

Now if many other games don't start then there's probably some deeper issue, but it never hurts to test various things to rule them out. Whether "the files are the same" or not, it's not the first time things like client overlays have caused problems.

Thx for the help.
Unfortunately, so far nothing really helped. There were no changes to the system since the last time the games worked. Interrestingly Lula is working virtually normally (with the exception of the random crashes).
Interestingly I have in the last days a large amount of "Service 'GalaxyVlientService' terminated unexpectedly. This happened x times." This started on the 25th January. Before this time I had no terminations at all. At this day M$ Update KB4023057 was installed. But even so. after this day I was able to play the games without an issue.
I cannot find any log files at all for either the games nor GoG.

Btw. I always start the games through GoG Galaxy App (version 2.0.57 Beta; the newer versions do not install/download), but also tried to start them from the game folder itself.

Btw. again:

Why does the GalaxyClient Service Log says:

"
2023-03-27 11:44:52.048 [Information][ (0)] [TID 250004][galaxy_service]: Log started. Application version: 2.0.57.14 (2023-01-24 08:20).
2023-03-27 11:44:52.049 [Information][ (0)] [TID 250004][galaxy_service]: Operating system: Windows 8 6.2 (Build 9200) (IA32)
2023-03-27 11:44:52.049 [Information][ (0)] [TID 250004][galaxy_service]: Platform identification: win10 64-bit
"[i][/i]

There was a bug in a earlier Galaxy version that would cause this bug. The service client would crash every time the connection was lost.
Sadly the updater itself is affected as well.

So in order to install the fix, you need to download the installer and install it. There is no need to uninstall the old version, you just install the new one over it.
However, do this right after Windows startup before you open Galaxy, because otherwise some files will stay locked until the next reboot.
After installing the new version, updates should work again.

Update:

Issue is solved. It was the client, which was f****d up.
After following neumi5694 suggestion of updating the client without ever starting it after reboot, the games started working again.

Thx.

There are countless posts in these forums, complaining that the galaxy client has messed things up in so many different ways. So of course it's worth exploring all options. Why don't you think about that next time, instead of having a go at me for trying to help? Clients are not the answer to everything. And GOG's agenda of really pushing the client, and trying to hide game installers means that many people don't realise that other options are available.

But for all problems caused by Galaxy - which are the majority of problems reported here on GOG. Also, by removing Galaxy you cut out one layer of possible error causes.