Trying to start the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men from the Steam client on a default Windows 8.1 installation will not work. Furthermore, you’ll get no error message other than the obvious lack of the gameplay.

As usual with these kinds of errors, a good starting point is to locate the actual game folder. From Steam’s Game library, right click on “Kane and Lynch: Dead Men” and select properties, then select the tab called “Local files” and finally click the button labeled “Browse local files”. You’ll now find yourself in the game directory. By trying to execute “kaneandlynch.exe” you’ll get an error message stating that “xlive.dll is missing from your computer”. Thankfully, Steam has already included the necessary libraries inside a folder named XLiveRedist which contains the installer package XLiveRedist01.02.0241.00.msi.

I bought BioShock on a Steam sale once upon a time and finally got around to playing it. However, a few minutes into the game I realized that the lack of sound was not due to my character going deaf from an initial explosion.

After trying to tweak the sound settings without any success I came to realize that BioShock is rather old as it was released back in 2007. Thus, it’s not exactly certified for Windows 8. A quick fix was to run the game in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3) which immediately brought the in-game sound back to life.