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Why won't my Surface Laptop play a PC game?

Alyssa 0 Reputation points
2025-11-08T23:13:22.5333333+00:00

I bought a Surface Laptop this year, and from day one, it's been consistent issues with it not wanting to run something called DLL files, or there supposedly not being the DLL files downloaded. Didn't have an issue with my older Surface Laptop 4, never had to download anything extra to get games to play, so I'm not sure why a brand new device would be having these issues.

Today, I attempted to download a Steam game (Morrowind), and it wouldn't launch at all. When going directly through the local files on my computer, it, again, said the DLL files basically required to run it weren't installed. What changed with the new Laptops? How do I fix this so I stop getting these DLL messages?

Surface | Surface Laptop | Performance and maintenance
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  1. Thomas4-N 4,955 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-11-09T13:25:11.3133333+00:00

    Hello Alyssa, thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum.

    Based on what you described, there are two possible reasons why the games aren’t launching and you're seeing DLL errors on your new Surface Laptop:

    • Processor architecture: What processor your new Surface Laptop is using — Intel, AMD, or Snapdragon? Some newer models released in 2025 use ARM-based chips like the Snapdragon X series. These run regular Windows apps through an emulator, and it can sometimes cause issues with older, legacy apps. Your older Surface Laptop from around 2021 likely used a standard x86 processor, which runs these setups natively.
    • Missing runtime libraries: That said, the most common cause of this issue is missing software components, particularly DirectX and Visual C++ Redistributables, which aren’t included by default in a clean Windows 11 install. Your previous device probably had these installed over time, which is why you didn’t run into this problem before.

    Here are steps you can follow to manually install the missing components:

    1. Verify the game files in Steam Open Steam, right-click on Morrowind, go to Properties > Installed Files, and click “Verify integrity of game files.” This will re-download any missing files and attempt to run the required installers.
    2. Install DirectX 9 manually Download the DirectX End-User Runtime from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35 Run DXSETUP.exe as Administrator, then restart your device.
    3. Install Visual C++ Redistributables https://dori-uw-1.kuma-moon.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist Download and install both the x86 and x64 versions (only skip ARM64) of every version from 2005-2022.
    4. Update Surface firmware and drivers Download the latest driver package for your Surface model. This will update system components and improve compatibility.

    Finally, restart the device and try to launch games again to see if the issue persists.

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    1 person found this answer helpful.

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