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Windows GameMaker: Studio won't open at all

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Ianuarius

Guest
First off, we did some bug tracking on this issue with the friendly people of YoYo Games. The issue is not resolved, but we have an idea of what might be causing it.

I wanted to write this post in case someone else has the same issue and is wondering what might be causing it. I've seen a few people complaining about the same thing and the "best solution" seems to be: revert to the older version of Windows, which is hardly a solution at all.

Symptoms
  1. GameMaker: Studio installs just fine.
  2. Executing the software for the first time downloads the proper updates.
  3. Then nothing. No GM:S, no error messages, and even the Updater at the background shuts down after a while.
  4. Running the program again just flashes the updater on the screen for a millisecond and after that nothing.
I've tried to uninstall and install again. I've tried to download the package again. I've tried to download an older version. I've tried rebooting Windows. I've tried running the software AND the installer in administrator mode. No help.

System
I'm using Windows 10 Home on a 3570K with 8GB of DDR3 and a GTX970. I'm fairly sure that the issue has nothing to do with hardware or the OS version since I've heard people having the same issue with Windows 7 and GM:S runs just fine on my girlfriend's laptop, which also has Windows 10.

Possible cause
We narrowed the issue down to this:
  • There's a group policy on Windows that prevents the execution of .NET 3.5 applications.
Why it is there? I have no idea.
  • I did a clean install of Windows 10 when it came out.
  • I AM the administrator on the machine.
  • There's no one else using the system.
  • The system is not in a network with anyone else.
  • I haven't set any additional group policies, ever.
We did notice, that if I go to the program directory of GameMaker: Studio and try to run the program from there as an administrator, I actually get an error message that refers to .NET 3.5 applications being blocked due to a group policy set by the system administrator (that, again, should be me).

The YoYo Games people thought that I might've installed a program that added the group policy. What the program could be? Who knows.

Possible solutions
Some Windows systems ship with gpedit that allows the user to change group policies. Win 10 Home isn't one of them. What gpedit apparently does is allow the manipulation of some registry entries. So, regedit should be able to do the same thing. But what entries should I change? I have no idea.

Some people have suggested that I can just download gpedit and use it on Win 10 Home, but then others have said that using it on a system that didn't ship with it is a disaster waiting to happen. I trust myself not to do anything stupid, but I'm not so optimistic about the people at Microsoft.

So, what's the solution? Haven't found one, yet. The YoYo Games people just basically said to me: tell us if you figure it out.

Additional thoughts
I bought the GM:S HumbleBundle. So, technically I'm a paying customer. Sure, I got the professional version of GM:S and a lot of (in my opinion overpriced) modules super cheap, but I DID spend my money on the product that on all accounts had some really good reviews behind it. I would at least assume that I can open up the program that retails at around $150. Again, I'm not the only one that's had this problem. And if you've worked on a project for two years, then decide to switch OS, you might not be able to do anything anymore.

Why GM:S uses .NET 3.5 that's some Vista era technology from almost 10 years ago is anyone's guess. Maybe the recent HumbleBundle is a sign of GM:S 2 finally coming out. Will it be an actually working product or just additional functionality slapped on top of this dinosaur? I guess time will tell. I would like to be optimistic.
 
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B

Burnsky

Guest
Same story with me: bought via Humble Bundle and Game Maker won't start (while Player works just fine). Also have a clean installation of Win 10. Very sad they want you to figure it out.
 

rIKmAN

Member
@Ianuarius
Is .NET3.5 installed on the machine?

If it were me I would install gpedit and have a look around to see if I could see anything that looks like it may be the problem.

A bit of Google-Fu turned up different guides (ie. here, here) which point to the same gpedit.msc download and had the same instructions for installing it on Windows 7/10 Home.

Note the extra instructions for copying folders if you are running x64.

You said you trust yourself, so just having a look through the policies seems like a safe thing to do?

Hope that helps.
 
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Ianuarius

Guest
You said you trust yourself, so just having a look through the policies seems like a safe thing to do?
Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I said that I don't trust Microsoft. I've hear people report that just opening up gpedit started to mess things up. I'm pretty sure I checked that .NET 3.5 is installed but now that you mentioned it again, I'm not 100% sure. I just assumed, that there would've been a different error message if it wasn't installed. And if it is blocked, I don't see how installing it would make any difference. But, I'll check, once I get back home.
 

rIKmAN

Member
Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I said that I don't trust Microsoft. I've hear people report that just opening up gpedit started to mess things up. I'm pretty sure I checked that .NET 3.5 is installed but now that you mentioned it again, I'm not 100% sure. I just assumed, that there would've been a different error message if it wasn't installed. And if it is blocked, I don't see how installing it would make any difference. But, I'll check, once I get back home.
I only ask as there are a lot of results on Google of people saying they get errors trying to install .NET3.5 on Win10 - so I assume it isn't installed as standard.

Where did you hear that just opening gpedit messes things up?

Save anything you need backed up from the PC, the worst that will happen is you need to reinstall from disk or recovery partition.

If you have a spare hard drive laying around, do a fresh install on that and do your testing on there, no worry about losing anything from your main hd then and you can experiment with gpedit without worrying about any consequences.
 
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Ianuarius

Guest
Yeah, that's a lot more work than I'm willing to do without pay. I have a pretty standard setup. The program should just work.
 
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