Prism Launcher Won't Start! What to do?

I ran into an issue recently where the Prism Launcher wouldn't start up. I just click on it and it dies quietly and does nothing. From my research and getting it working again, there are a few things you can try.

My specific issue seemed to be related to version 8.4, and I downgraded to version 8.3 and it resolved it. This was on my laptop. I am running 8.4 just fine on my desktop. I have no idea the difference!

I also made sure that I had the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2022 x64 installed which is required if you use the MSVC .exe Windows installer. See below for more details.

How to Downgrade to an older version of Prism Launcher

Prism can be configured to upgrade automatically, and there may have been an update that you're not aware of.

You can find all of the Prism versions here.

To downgrade, click on the version you want, then locate the installer for your operating system down at the bottom of that page. For Windows, you probably want the Windows MSVC installer. This is the installer that is the default when you download the most recent version from their website.

When you run that installer, you'll get the normal installation process.

I downgraded successfully without uninstalling the later version, but you can safely do that. Your instances will be kept and located by the new install.

Make sure that Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable is installed

If you're using the MSVC (.exe) installer, you must have Micrdosoft Visual C++ Redistributable libraries. installed. You can get those here. You may need to run this installation as an admin in Windows.

Without this, in my experience, Prism will just not launch.

To see if you have it installed, Open Settings > Add or Remove programs and search for "redistributable" and you should find it. Hmm. I have 7 of them. I should probably clean that up.

With those two steps, hopefully you can get your own Prism launcher going. For more help, check out the PrismLauncher Reddit, or hit us up in my discord server. We have lots of Prism users there, on both PC and Mac. Good luck!