I have had virtually zero issues with this client until today, and it's such an annoyance I am considering abandoning it all together.

So, I was updating the client today and half way during the update it just closed itself for no reason. Attempting to launch the client resulted in an error message stating "essential components needed to start gog galaxy are missing". Okay, that's to be expected, an install just failed. Whatever.

So I begrudgingly uninstall and reinstall the client, knowing I will most likely have to manually install all of my games again since the client will be unlikely to automatically detect my games (installed on multiple partitions). Annoying, but I can live with that.

Well, problem is, I still get the same error message when I reinstall the client. Cool beans. A little bit of google searching and I discover a "fix" where I type "sc delete GalaxyClientService" into Command Prompt immediately after reinstalling the client again. Problem solved!

So I set about reinstalling all of my games. The Witcher 3 gets 90% of the way done and the client just closes all together again, for no reason.

Now I get the error message: "The program can't start because PocoXML.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling ther program to fix this problem." whenever I try to launch GOG.

How many more reinstalls is this guy going to have to do before GOG Galaxy will actually work again? This is beyond ridiculous and I am seeking a solution immediately, or I will consider giving your competition more of my hard earned money.

Thank you for your time.

While I don't have a solution to your problem (I don't use Galaxy, as it's not on Linux yet), I would suggest you post the issue to https://mantis.gog.com as that's the bug tracker and staff will likely see it quicker.

deleted

A solution that works fine for me and has for the past seven years:
- Download the game installer via the web browser
- Use the downloaded installer to install the game
- Play the game
- Do not use galaxy

there
fixed that for you

Galaxy still has that "essential components" issue? That's the reason I stopped trying it out like half a year ago. Also in my case reinstalling the client didn't fix it.

At least I learned from this thread how that is supposed to be fixed with an additional command, but then apparently there are still problems...

Meh, I will use it only if I'll need it for some multiplayer game in the future. I am easily annoyed by having to run a client (including Steam) to run a single-player game. It is a few more steps to run the actual game, first need to launch and login to the client...

I like clients, less likely to forget a game is still installed.

Except that for some games like The Walking Dead, the downloader links are broken...

You mean the old legacy GOG Downloader? You can still download the installers either with your web browser, or Galaxy (backup files), I think?

There are a couple of games on GOG where the offline installers seem to lack md5 checksum, and I think The Walking Dead (Season 2 I think) is one of those. I wonder if that is related to it failing with GOG Downloader then? You can still download it with the web browser though.

I use gogrepo.py to download them. It also downloads The Walking Dead fine, but complains about the missing md5 sums for season 2 I think (which just means I can't run the gogrepo.py verify command to check its integrity reliably, it will only verify the file size then and assume the files are fine...).

Yay, at least one other person here see's the light.

Ban all clients! Point 1, download via browser, nothing to do with Downloader or other software.

Ah. For some reason misread about using the downloader. Downloading via browser is crappy++. The download speed at least for me are about 10 times slower than using the downloader for example.

Doesn't Galaxy offer any "Repair" option at all? O_o
Anyway, I'd backup all my savegames before attempting anything.

Never had any problems with it. I can download 6 files, each getting over 1mb/s. True, not being able to pause/resume is a nuisance, but then so is installing some garbage-ware to find its installed various other programs, spyware, and such like. I prefer minimalism.

1mb/s compared to 10MB/s is quite different.

I am in the UK, 6*1mbs at any speed under any circumstances is great. Hell, I can't get ariel, xG, digital tv, or virgin where I am located, so am damn glad to receive anything :o)