Maybe your Visual C++ Redistributable installation is corrupt? I am purely guessing here, but if this was the case reinstalling the game may not always solve the issue...

Try downloading Visual C++ Redistributable Packages from Microsoft and reinstalling them (I have no idea which one DOS2 uses) and see if that solves the problem after restart. It certanly is much faster than installing/uninstalling DOS2.

Warenwolf is probably correct as there is, in all likelihood, some Microsoft Framework missing/corrupted on your system.

The frameworks required for the game, according to the folks at Larian Studios, can be found: HERE

Download and run the installers and restart the machine afterwards before attempting to run the game for good measure.

Be sure and let us know if this solves your problem for the benefit of others in the future!

Ran into pretty much the same problem- after installing the latest hotfix the game would crash on start-up, and continued to have the same problem even after re-installing and patching only up to the version I'd previously been playing with. Frankly I value my time too much and have enough other games to play that I'm just not willing to dick around with this kind of shit anymore. So I've just uninstalled the game and will be shelving it for at least 6 months. Maybe by then they'll have stabilized things and will have fixed the numerous bugs that currently plague the game as well. At least in the future I'll remember not to buy any games released by Larian until they've been out for a year and are heavily discounted.

It did end up being a corrupted Visual C++ 2015 problem. Somehow I guess the hotfix corrupted the .dll files. But after uninstalling and reinstalling them it worked. Hope this specific issue helps others.

same problem here! Unable to start after hotfix-installation!

i downgraded back to the last patch befor, works fine.

THIS is a CRITICAL BUG, needs to be fixed!
@Devs: contact me for information you need

it seems problem is solved with hotfix2!