Freelancer on VirtualBox

PCH is referring to platform controller hub, relating to your intel motherboard chipset most likely, and ntdll is an important Windows file.

Are you running the game as admin?
Do you have antivirus running?
Have you installed the latest drivers or are you running from standard Windows 10 reference drivers?
Have you completely re-installed Freelancer?

Also can you open the event viewer and go into application logs and find the entry that corresponds?

Additional thought, try booting w10 into safe mode and see if FL runs or still has the crash.

Another additional thought, try going into freelancer.ini and commenting out the movie references, incase its anything to do with bink codec.

Other than that, try a w10 virtualbox and see if it runs, if it does, its likely something specific to your machine, as virtualbox virtualises all hardware.

I tried my virtual 10 (original Creators Update, English) and it worked without issue (sharing my current install, though, rather than installing from scratch) - Windows prompted to install DirectPlay, the EULA came up, then it started. You said it “crashed without even opening a window” so does that mean you didn’t get the DirectPlay prompt? If it’s not already installed, try doing so manually (I think you’ll find it under legacy features, but not sure of the exact steps, sorry).

Hmm.

Have you tried turning user account control to off as a test and re-running the install/launching the game?

The fact that you can run it in a VM fine and not in your native system implies the difference is the particular hardware/driver software. As otherwise it would fail as there is no difference in the software being installed.

Its why I asked you to try it.

Please do not suggest disabling UAC. Doing that is not required to run Freelancer.

You can check for DirectPlay by running C:\Windows\System32\OptionalFeatures.exe directly and looking for it in the list.

Bolte. wrote:
switch account control to off as a test

I believe I did not tell him to turn it off forever, he is even free to try this in safe mode if he wishes.

I wouldn’t do it at all.

That’s you, but we are dealing with something relating to his PC, as the game runs virtually - it’s mere experimentation.

And, I have run without UAC since it was invented, and I have never had a single problem because of it. I know what I am doing when browsing the web sir, but I know not everyone does, I merely suggested it as a troubleshooting step, just to rule it out.

UAC is NOT a security boundary, it was invented to allow for de-elavated permissions in certain scenarios. Internet Explorer protected mode for example, some protected modes in Microsoft Office for example.

Most programs have gone past UAC now, flash player for example will still prompt to be run in modern browsers, back in the day with UAC off this would have run without prompt.

These days it is superfluous due to downloads being marked in a certain way as to not be trusted by default. It is mere inconvenience these days.

That’s what I needed to know, thanks, now I can see if the launcher can detect if DirectPlay is enabled and if not attempt to activate it if possible, as part of the wrapper program that installs the fonts etc.

Bolte, I don’t know what you’re rambling on about, but UAC most assuredly is still relevant today. It’s an elevation authorization prompt, nothing more, nothing less. To disable it means you’re instantly and permanently granting any piece of software executing under your Windows identity access to the Administrator account on your computer. That’s an awful idea, though I’m happy to hear you haven’t run into issues with that glaring security hole in your system.

I wouldn’t recommend running Windows with UAC off even if you know exactly what you’re doing, for the record. There are way too many potential drive-by exploits in browsers to not have that additional safety layer.

And all of the malware these days targets the user, not UAC.

“One important thing to know is that UAC is not a security boundary. UAC helps people be more secure, but it is not a cure all. UAC helps most by being the prompt before software is installed. This part of UAC is in full force when the “Notify me only when…” setting is used. UAC also prompts for other system wide changes that require administrator privileges which, considered in the abstract, would seem to be an effective counter-measure to malware after it is running, but the practical experience is that its effect is limited. For example, clever malware will avoid operations that require elevation. There are other human behavior factors which were discussed in our earlier blog posts (post #1 and post #2).”

From a microsoft blog ^^
Anti-Malware programs are the first line of defence, not UAC, as they are frequently updated with definitions.

Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/e7/2009/02/05/update-on-uac/

The idea of UAC is sound, it didn’t turn out that way in practicality, because of the users. But that’s another story and irrelevant now.

Solution will be to trigger a UAC prompt with this command

“dism /Online /enable-feature /all /FeatureName:“DirectPlay” /NoRestart”

But have yet to test.
I will fire up a VM later.