[2023] Never been able to launch game

What happens if you run stelllariis.exe direct from file explorer, any Windows error show?

If not, Right-click on stellaris.exe, properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullscreen optimizations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply, and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select the fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, refresh rate 60


If that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log , exceptions.log  

That error shows you have a DirectX 9 problem.

Please go into these two folders:
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\
C:\Windows\System32\

Delete all files that fit the pattern d3dx9_??.dll in both those folders; usually about 20 in each. Then go here:

Download DirectX Redist (June 2010) from Official Microsoft Download Center

The Microsoft DirectX® End-User Runtime installs a number of runtime libraries from the legacy DirectX SDK for some games that use D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, XACT, and/or Managed DirectX 1.1. Note that this package does not modify the DirectX Runtime installed on your Windows... www.microsoft.com (run dxsetup.exe after extracting this download to its own folder anywhere on your computer)

That should do it for you!  

Do you still get exactly that bad DLL message liek before? Because what we just did ought to have fixed that for sure; in particular that exact file would need to have been deleted from BOTH folders, before running dxsetup.exe

If somehow you do get that same error, I'm afraid you'll very likely need to do at least a Windows reset, or clean wipe and reinstall, to fix up DX9 - MS do not provide any utility for fixing it.


Note I'm on leave until November after today.