Unreal Engine 4.1 fails to start in Windows 8.1

I cannot currently launch Unreal Engine 4.1 on my Windows 8.1 machine. Unreal Engine 4.0.2 was (and still is) working correctly, but 4.1 crashes at startup. Looking at the log file, it looks like it can’t start “ShaderCompileWorker.exe” for some reason. This file definitely exists in the folder it’s looking in.

I should state that my video card is an NVidia GeForce 780m, running the latest drivers from NVidia, and reiterate that it works fine with Unreal Engine 4.0.2.

I’m not sure if it’s related or not, but the launcher hasn’t been successfully launching even 4.0.2 since the update that added the ability to select engine versions. I’ve been having to manually start the editor by navigating to the binaries folder.

Hi Moonspine,

Can you check here and see if this solution works for you as well? If not please let us know so we can continue to try and find a solution for you. Thank you!

Unfortunately, this did not solve my problem. None of those solutions seem to have helped me.

I have new information. Unreal Engine 4.0.2 is also crashing on me, just not at startup. It’s crashing when I open the material editor. Looks like it’s something to do with ShaderCompilerWorker.exe again.

P.S. I keep having to rename my log files to “.txt” in order for this site to allow an upload. Perhaps the attachments should allow “.log” files?

I’ve been trying to solve this issue for the better part of the day, and I finally managed to get it running.

According to your log file, you keep your 4.1 directories under “D:/Program Files/Unreal Engine/”. I had a somewhat similar setup (“D:/Unreal Engine/UnrealEngine-4.0”) which worked fine with 4.0.X.

I found out (through trial-and-error) that 4.1 doesn’t take too kindly to spaces in the directory when looking for “ShaderCompilerWorker.exe”. It was definitely in the right folder but it just couldn’t find it. I changed my folder structure to be “D:/Unreal_Engine/UnrealEngine-4.1” instead of “D:/Unreal Engine/UnrealEngine-4.1” and the editor launched without any problems.

Well, that fixed my issue! I really never would have guessed it without your help though. The default installation path is inside of “Program Files,” and the directory it creates is “Unreal Engine,” so I just assumed it could handle spaces in the filename.

Anyways, thank you very much!

Happy to help. Good luck with your project(s)!