PoE won't boot after re-seating my GPU, but all other games run fine(SOLVED)

**SOLVED**

Edit: After realizing i could boot the game with "-ns" launch options, i went into sound settings and noticed that no audio device was able to be recognized, so i checked my audio drivers and ultimately managed to solve this, for some reason, in the process of cleaning my pc my nvidia HDMI audio driver had dissapeared, i simply went to device manager and updated all the drivers i could and low and behold, the HD audio driver had an update and now ii can boot the game just fine without -ns and i can select my preferred audio device in sound settings. What the hell is going on v3 really.


Hi guys, Writing here in hopes that someone is able to help me out, this is gonna be a semi lenghty one so bear with me as im typing everything i did in chronological order.

Yesterday i was gonna do the occasional cleanup of my rig, vacuuming etc when my intrusive thoughts won after seeing caked dust inside my 1080 FE which i couldn't reach with my vacuum or dustbrush.

I then decided to dismount my GPU and dissassemble it to clean it thoroughly including removing the heatsink and reapplying new thermalpaste.

After finishing this cleanup and booting up the pc and playing some WoW whilst watching the temperatures, i then wanted to play PoE but alas, wasn't possible.

Upon launching the game through Steam Library or right clicking the steam icon and chosing the game, steam is starting the process of booting up the game and my profile shows to be in game for a brief moment, but then it just stop and nothing happens.

So i started troubleshooting the eventlog and noticed i had the following error:



Naturally, being completely on foreign ground here, but telling my self i know enough to notice that the cause of this is either related to the pathing of the game through steam or it is to do with my KERNELBASE.dll.

So I started doing the following:

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1. Verified integrity of game files in steam - Didn't help, Same error.
2. Reinstalled the game and restarted PC - Didn't help, Same error.
3. Completely removed all traces of PoE in appdata/roaming, user/mygames and of course the steam installation directory.
4. cleared download cache in steam settings
5. disabled shader pre-caching to force new shaders to be downloaded upon new install
6. Installed the game yet again - Didn't help, Same error.
6.1 Updates windows via Windows Update including 2 optional ones I had pending
7. Ran DDU to remove old nvidia driver and installed a fresh new driver - Didn't help, Same error.
8. Ran a bunch of system diagnostics through CMD to locate potential corrupt files and repaired them successfully - Didn't help, same error
9. Located the KERNELBASE.dll and swapped it with my brothers as we have the same OS (this was quite the task cus i needed to sort the proper permissions) - Didn't help, Same error.
10. Opened up CMD yet again and ran "net stop winmgmt", renamed wbem directory to directory.old, then ran "net start winmgnt" to try something another post in this forum recommended for a similar but not identical error. Again, didn't help and it actually wouldn't allow me to fully stop the winmgmt as it automatically started after stopping it so not sure if this step did anything or not.

--

I've exhausted all my, my brother and my friends ideas mydudes, the only two options i see left is to:

11. try a new GPU to test if i ripped my GPU in the cleaning process, and i do have a spare 970 but i need to get another pcie cable as it requires 2 connectors and not just one which my 1080 FE does and also, part of me thinks, why the hell would my gpu be dead if i can run all other games just fine at even better temps than before, the problem is ONLY with PoE
12. Reinstall windows.

HALP

Regards

Edit 1:

11. Brother goes, didnt poe have like a snowflake thing with sound? try and launch it with no sound with "-ns" in launch options. - WORKED i can launch the game now, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Edit 2:
I can boot the game with "-ns" in launch options now, but game still won't boot if i remove said launch options, what the hell is going on v2