My Funcom folder, and the games under it, is on a drive accessible to all of my operating systems. My Windows 10 installation can run TSW and SWL normally. My Linux Mint installation also runs the games normally using Proton compatibility. But under Windows 7, both games start the ClientPatcher.exe process and that is as far as they get before it hangs. They connect to the update server, according to Patcher.log, report that 130 RDB files are in use, report “Found 4854.2 MB Unused space in all rdbdata files. 0 errors”, print that boilerplate “No project defined,you are missing the project configuration keys” line, and stop. The log file remains open, but no additional lines are added. The screen with “scanning local files” and “importing RDB hashes” and “START GAME” never appears. ClientPatcher.exe just sits frozen until you kill it with Task Manager. I even tried restoring an old version (ClientPatcher.exe.0.tmp from 2020) and it behaved exactly the same.
Trying to install the games at any other location goes nowhere. The games installers also use ClientPatcher.exe to create and populate the game folders. So the installers reach the same point of launching the process and also freeze. They can’t even make a complete new game folder because they can’t download the files to create it.
EDIT: I’m going to try an experiment. I just noticed that I have an archived folder of “The Secret World” last updated on 02/29/2016.
Yeah, no surprise. A lot fewer RDB files and less unused space, but it froze just the same.