So, I recently saw a retrospective video on Neverwinter Nights and decided I'd love to play it again, maybe try out some old modules, etc. Unfortunately, upon installing it, the game keeps crashing. I've tried installing DirectX Runtime, I've tried running it in compatibility mode, tried a full uninstallation and deletion of extraneous files from the last time I had it installed, but the game keeps crashing. Just tried installing the HOTU patch to see if that fixed things, but I get the same error. Any suggestions?

You shouldn't need to do any of that. I did a fresh install of GoG NWN on a clean install of Win10, and it just worked without any changes at all.

I suspect you might have faulty GPU drivers. Intel Graphics? When asking for tech support it helps to know where you are starting from.

OS?
GPU?
CPU?

GoG Version of NWN?

Try to reinstall Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29. Did you try the compatibility mode (WinXP SP2 or SP3)?

That's it! I remember doing something about those not to long ago for another game. I must have forgot to reinstall the 2008 redist.

And here I thought it had something to do with FFDSHOW and codecs. Silly me.


Edit: It seems I have 6 2008 Redist's installed! I am so confused. I went ahead and uninstalled all the older ones and kept the latest X86 and X64 versions. If that doesn't fix it, Ill try compatibility modes, and still no I will try reinstalling MS Vis C++ 2008.

You should keep all of the redistributables. Different applications require different versions of Microsoft Visual C++. The newest version doesn't replace the older ones. Simply uninstall the 2008 version and install it once again and try the compatibility modes.

Ok, so I should uninstall all of the 2008 ones and then reinstall the latest 2008 Redist then. I wasn't about to uninstall any of the other ones from 05 to 2017.

This also begs the question. Why do we need to have all these separate versions? Why can't the newest one replace the old ones? It makes it so confusing.

That's a question for Microsoft. :) Perhaps separate versions make less technical troubles than one compiled package. Maybe the differences are so big that it's inappropriate to mix them. Hard to tell.

The issue with how they have it is with installing games from Steam or GoG Galaxy, etc. They always install a new VC Redist for that game, so you end up having multiples of the same version which I think causes problems. And it makes it confusing.

Also it seemed the link you shared for the 2008 redist is an older version than one of the redist of 2008 that I had. It probably wont be an issue though.

I never had a problem with multiple installs of the same redistributable versions. Maybe you're thinking about 32 and 64 bit versions? I don't think it's possible to have the same redistributable as two separate installations (excluding the 32 and 64 bit versions of course, but they're not similar). When a game installs a redistributable that you already have, it most likely overwrites the previous installation. So I don't think this is the problem. That's probable. :) Install the newest version then.

Ok I got it working now! I think all I needed to do was enable compatability mode.

But now since I reinstalled the game (BTW we both just lost The Game >:3) All of my saves are gone. I thought that NWN: DE had the cloud saves. I'm going to have to start all over now. Oh well, I was kinda stuck in my last save, so at least now I should be able to do a better build, etc.

Edit: Oh I see what happened! I had two versions of NWN: DE installed. The GoG version and a non-GoG Version. The other one was the one that had all my saves. I actually deleted that install to free up space, but it was still in the trash bin.

Now I wonder if that other version works better than the GoG version. idk, but I got this one working now, just gonna move the saves over and have them get backed up!

Also got the 1.69 rebuild patch and the community 1.71 patch installed. Now Im gonna go look on The Nexus site for mods for NWN.

Could one of the mods either sticky this or add it to the troubleshooting FAQ for Neverwinter Nights? There seems to be only generic troubleshooting information on the FAQ, but this actually fixed the problem with the abnormal program termination on launch.
If only I hadn't removed all my mods in the process of doing a clean install to try to fix the game...