1. Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable
   
2. OpenAL
   
3. Elements
   
   1. If you never used modded materials
      
   2. If you unsubscribed from certain material mods
      
      1. Removing designs - Method 1
         
      2. Removing designs - Method 2 - Basic steps
         
      3. Removing designs - Method 2 - Optional steps
         
4. Languages
   
5. RAM
   
6. Precision combat badge and enemy
   
7. Crash log
   
8. PowerShell

If you get an error message whenever you boot the game, and said error message has an error code, then open your favorite browser / search engine combo and paste the error code in the search bar. Pro tip: you can select the window with the error, then Ctrl+C Ctrl+V into a text document, so you can grab the error code without manually typing it.

If the error code happens to be 0xc000007b, then you’re missing at least one Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package. Grab it/them from here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170.

If you get an error message stating that OpenAL32.dll library is missing, then you need to install OpenAL: https://www.openal.org/.

If that doesn't fix the error, then it has been reported that uninstalling and then reinstalling the game fixes it, though you might want to make a backup of your stuff before uninstalling. Read the first section of the modding guide if you need to know where the files you want to backup are located:
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2818973760

It has been reported ( https://cs2bus.com/app/476530/discussions/0/4356743320307051887/ ) that another symptom of OpenAL not being installed is that the game crashes immediately or a few milliseconds after pressing the Play button.

If you're experiencing crashes while the game is booting, by far the most likely reason is that it is trying to load a design that uses a material that is made out of at least one element that is not in your current installation. This can happen if:

• you made a design using a custom material from a certain mod, then unsubscribed from that mod;
  
• you subscribed to a certain mod on the Workshop that uses a custom material, but the author neither included the material in its mod, nor flagged the required material mod as a dependency for their own mod;
  
• a mod you are subscribed to was recently updated and now it requires a custom material to work;
  
• you have a custom mod in your Imports folder that requires a custom material that you don't have.

By "mod" here I don't mean just custom modules, ships, missiles and drones, but also campaigns: maybe you are subscribed to a campaign that has a custom ship that uses a custom module made with a custom material that uses a custom element that you don't have.

If you never used modded materials, then either:

• you subscribed to a problematic design on the Workshop;
  
• a design you are subscribed to was updated and became problematic;
  
• you're trying to load a problematic design from your Imports folder.

If you feel like subscribing to the material mod that is required for the design to work, that is an option. Otherwise:

• order the mods you're subscribed to by "Date Subscribed" and unsubscribe from the most recent one(s) (see pictures below);
  
• order the mods you're subscribed to by "Date Updated" and unsubscribe from the most recent one(s);
  
• delete the most recent file(s) you put in your Mods\Data\Imports folder (check the modding guide if you don't remember where to find the Mods folder).

If you were subscribed to certain material mods, made designs out of the modded materials, subscribed to Workshop mods that require them and/or put custom designs that require them in the Imports folder, then, as for the section above, you only have two options:

• (re)subscribe to the material mod;
  
• remove the problematic designs.

Locating and removing problematic designs is easier said than done, simply because who knows how many you have. If you choose to remove the designs, then there are two methods you can use to do that.

1) Subscribe to the material mod(s) again.

2) Unsubscribe from all the Workshop mods that won't work without the material mod(s).

3) Make a backup of your CDE folder (just in case you accidentally delete something you shouldn't have.

4) Delete all your campaigns, ships, modules, etc. that won't work without the material mod(s).

5) Delete all the custom mods in your Imports folder that won't work without the material mod(s).

6) Unsubscribe from the material mod(s).

7) If the game crashes after you unsubscribe to the material mod(s) but works fine when you are subscribed to it, then you didn't delete everything that requires it: either restart from point 1 (possibly skipping point 3), or check the second method.

The second method takes the opposite approach, in the sense that you start by deleting all your designs, and then, if you want, restore as many as you can without making the game crash, depending on how many of the optional steps you want to follow:

1) Copy the links of all the Workshop mods you're subscribed to in a text file, then unsubscribe from all of them (except maybe the ones you know for sure don't require any custom material(s)).

2) Make a backup of CDE\UserDesigns.txt, CDE\UserLevels.txt and Imports folder.

3) Delete CDE\UserDesigns.txt, UserLevels.txt and the files inside the Imports folder.

4) Run the game briefly, just to make sure that it boots properly. If it still crashes, then please start a new discussion in the Steam COADE General Discussions or Bug Reports, and in this discussion attach the crash log you can find in CDE\Crashes (check the dates in the name of the files and attach the one that was generated when you booted the game – depending on the cause of the crash, the game might not generate a crash log).

Now the game doesn't crash anymore, but you have no designs. If you follow all of these optional steps, you'll recover all the designs that don't depend on the material mod(s):

5) Subscribe to all the Workshop mods that don't make your game crash.

6) Restore all the files in the Imports folder that don't make your game crash.

7) If you could not restore all files in the Imports folder, then create as many empty files in the Imports folder as you have files that you made a backup of but couldn't restore, give each of them the name of one of the files you couldn't restore, and paste into each of them all the designs that are in the respective backup files that don't make your game crash. If at the end of this step there are any empty files, delete them.

8) If you could not restore CDE\UserDesigns.txt, then create an empty UserDesigns.txt file in that folder and paste into it all the designs that are in the backup file that don't make your game crash.

9) If you could not restore CDE\UserLevels.txt, then create an empty UserLevels.txt file in that folder and paste into it all the modules, ships, missions, campaigns, etc. that are in the backup file that don't make your game crash.

10) If there are campaigns that you want to salvage despite them having missions which feature ships that you can't load because they require the material mod(s), then you can manually change the name of these ships to stock ones, or to some other ships you have that you know work fine without that material mod(s).

If you try to load a language from your Mods\Data\Languages folder while simultaneously loading the same language from the Workshop, then the game will be stuck in the loading screen. You need to get rid of one of the two.

This game’s .exe is 32 bits, which means that normally it can only use 2 GB of RAM. The moment it exceeds that, it crashes. Most likely you’ve experienced that at least once during a mission.

First, locate CDE.exe (it’s inside the “Children of a Dead Earth” folder - check the modding guide for more details).
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2818973760
Then make a back up copy of CDE.exe.

There are four ways to patch the .exe so that it can use 4 GB of RAM, vastly improving its stability:

1. If you already know what to do at this point, then do it.
   
2. Download the 4GB Patch executable from https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371, run it, navigate to CDE.exe and “open” it. The program will patch CDE.exe and generate a backup copy called CDE.exe.backup.
   
3. Download Explorer Suite from https://ntcore.com/?page_id=388, run CFF Explorer and open CDE.exe with it, Go to NT Headers → File Header → Characteristics, click where it says “Click here”, check App can handle >2gb address space, OK, then File → Save.
   
4. Open CDE.exe with a good text editor (read: Notepad++), Find the first occurrence of
   
   STX
   character (line 3 and column 199, or position 319), change it to
   
   "
   then save the file.
   

A campaign must have at least a mission with both the precision combat badge and at least one enemy ship, otherwise the game will crash when you click one of the buttons in the window that appears after you complete a mission.

If you don’t want to have a disable ship type of mission in your custom campaign, then you must have at least one join or refuel mission with the precision combat badge and at least one enemy. This enemy can be a military vessel that your civilian ship has to evade as it tries to join or refuel another friendly ship or station, or it can even be a civilian ship or station without AI. In any case, if you don’t want the enemy ship or station to be disabled, then the enemy doesn’t require any flag in the fleet editor.

If nothing mentioned above solves your problem, then you can check if a crash log was generated (double-check the date and time in the crash log’s name to make sure it’s the one relevant to the crash you experienced) and read/post it. Read the first section of the modding guide if you don't know where the crash logs are located:
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2818973760

As of date, the only identified type of crash that doesn't generate a crash log is when OpenAL is not installed, but there might be other reasons. If you installed OpenAL and the game still crashes without generating a crash log, then I suggest you run the game from PowerShell and read the output.

To run the game from PowerShell, open the Children of a Dead Earth folder where CDE.exe is located, Shift + right click on an empty space inside the folder, open PowerShell window here, paste or write the following:
then press Enter.

Refer to the modding guide to know where the Children of a Dead Earth folder and CDE.exe are located:
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2818973760

And that's it. Hope it helps!