Star Trek Online Forum

Launch Crossover
Click the Bottles button in the top-left of the window
Select the Star Trek Online bottle
Under the Gear menu pick Open C: Drive
Go into drive_c/Program Files/Cryptic Studios/Star Trek Online/Live
Duplicate the file "D3DCompiler_42.dll" in the directory
Rename the duplicate file "D3DCompiler_47.dll"

This should prevent the crash on the Cryptic loading screen - however the next loading screen will sit there for 15-30 minutes before going on to the main menu.

Looks like the update removed this DLL which was related to dropping Windows XP support but causes the game to crash in Crossover. STO may restore this DLL in a future update, but in the meantime this manual workaround should get the game running again.

Thank you, I will try it.

Thank you, this works!

This might also be resolved with today's (Nov 3) patch which lists the following fix in their patch notes:

"Resolved an issue where Star Trek Online would not load for players playing with a Windows XP OS."

With regards to the patch on 11/3, my STO still hangs on the black Cryptic screen before crashing. Maybe it has been resolved, in that they make sure it no longer plays well on Win XP/XP bottles.

Adding D3DCompiler_47.dll fixes the initial crash but It just loads into a black screen for perpetuity.

Ok let it sit at the black screen, after about 45 minutes is loaded in. Subsequent loadins are fast. whew

Worked for me, thanks so much for the fix!

Okay, there is a new problem after this workaround is installed: the main 3D window seems to be rendered at a lower resolution than the screen actually has, resulting in noticeable jaggies on near-horizontal lines in the main 3D world part of the window.

It turns out that this is due to the game spontaneously resetting the graphics setting "Resolution Scale" in the Options: Display to a weird value (0.60 in my case). Change this value to 1.0 and the problem is fixed. I don't know why the game's full graphics setting reset used such a broken value, but it did it on two different machines in my house.

BTW, Andrew's post with the file fix seems to be in error in one detail -- the missing file was not present in prior versions of the game; I checked my Time Machine backups of the older versions of the client, and the file isn't there, either. So it looks like Cryptic linked the game client against a newer version of the file, but didn't provide a copy in-game. According to a Microsoft developer blog (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chuckw/2012/05/07/hlsl-fxc-and-d3dcompile/), the _47 version of the file was introduced with Windows 8.1 and is still used with Windows 10. It's not clear why users of older Windows machines aren't having the same problems we are, since they shouldn't have the file in the OS anywhere if it was introduced with Win 8.1.

Hi guys,

please use this fix for the 12/04/2016 patch update. We have tested it in house and it seems to work again. I looks like with the latest patch the files were updated so the last fix was reset.

what fix? I don't see one

I've got the new MacBook Pro 15 inch, which has been out for about six months. I've tried installing Star Trek Online both via Steam and directly, and never got past a blank screen that comes up after the Cryptic loading screen. I waited for over an hour but nothing happened. I also tried going into the C Drive as mentioned above, but the renamed duplicate file already existed. What else should I do? I desperately want to play this game. I thought there'd be no problem with the new laptop. Any idea?