Try verifying game, or full reinstall. even though it's obviously outside the game itself.
Possibly the required VC+ Redistributable needs reinstalling.
Check your Drivers, Windows will overwrite them, even if it breaks things.
Very difficult to figure out what MS removed, or replaced that you need.
Installing wrong drivers is a common complaint.
I have a spexific audio card, and MS kept installing NVidia HD drivers as default.
When I don't even use the HD audio of my damn graphics card.
Had to use Group Policy to force it to stop reinstalling crap that broke my setup.
If it's not a missing Redistrabutable, look at your drivers next.
I took back full control, blocked and removed all it's bloatware,and I now decide if, and when I update the OS.
Damn forced updates are the worst idea ever.
Steam' s justt as bad, which is why I use GOG.
Fummy thing was, when I had an activation issue after a hardware change, because I refuse to use a MS account.
Everything "essential" MS tries to disable, is all their bloatware I'd already removed. It's a legal copy by the way.
After a month of dire non activation warnings, it suddenly was autio activated, once more.
Last edited by Uhuru NUru; 07/11/17 12:41 AM.