Oh God, The Game Lost The Executable?

[Arrynopolis]

I dunno what happened, but the game (downloaded through steam) stopped opening. Gets stuck on the launcher and says "failure to update, can't find executable" or something to that extent. tried reinstalling, didn't fix. What do I do? D:

[Llyssa]

I'd download it the regular way until steam gets itself sorted out. https://warframe.com/

[cyrus106]

No no no, no need. All you gotta do is goto Steam\Steamapps\common\warframe and find the warframe .exe file, right click it and hit properties and then find the "run as administrator" setting. Tick this box, then goto the warframe\tools folder and do the same administrator thing for the "launcher.exe".

 

Everything should be fixed

[Arrynopolis]

Ran the launcher as an admin, it asked me to find the warframe folder so I found it, and now it's downloading updates. Good sign?

[Batfish27]

i know this is 10 years later but i am having the same issue but when i go to the warframe folder the folder is empty, do i do?

[Mushroompixie]

I have a friend who had this exact same problem. Try removing warframe from your steam account entirely and re-adding it, instead of just uninstalling it. It worked for them!

[Starfyre76]

I'm having the issue too.  
https://gyazo.com/415dd08b5842c9e672316e0c1ff90c5f

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but it isn't installing anything.  Been playing fine on epic games, but wanted to link my steam to get more market options.

[(XBOX)WeaponOfMassFun]

On 2023-04-10 at 12:40 AM, Starfyre76 said:

I'm having the issue too.  
https://gyazo.com/415dd08b5842c9e672316e0c1ff90c5f

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but it isn't installing anything.  Been playing fine on epic games, but wanted to link my steam to get more market options.

Same issue. I'm a returning player from xbox who just linked to play on steam, so I don't have the launcher executable installed in the first place and my steam deck refuses to download it. All the other solutions have not helped.

[Nekomian]

This post is very old, but in the event that this happens to you, there's a few options to try:

• Download the game from Epic Games store - copy the Launcher.exe that downloads from there into the erroring directory that Steam gives you. As far as EGS is concerned, it only downloads the basic necessities of the launcher; this is probably the easiest method, and even allows you to symlink the Epic Games install to the Steam one afterwards and the game will function completely fine (this is useful so you don't have two entire installs, but can still have access to the EGS one). Warframe's launcher manages file integrity independently of any game clients that install it, so it should handle everything going forward just fine.
• (Not Recommended) Remove Warframe from your Steam library entirely (not just uninstall, since it can still show up in the library after uninstallation); redownload the entire thing and run.
• (Not Recommended) Download the game from Warframe's site directly: https://www.warframe.com/download . It may download the Launcher and other files in the '%LOCALAPPDATA%/Warframe' folder if you're unable to find them, prior to asking for an installation directory. I'm unsure why it does this to be honest, as it's caused issues with people that have low disk space on their C: drives and want to install the game to a different drive, as it attempts to download everything there prior to moving it to an install directory (meaning it will do space calculations on both drives instead of just one).

Ultimately, the solution in all of these is just to "get the executable elsewhere" from a trusted source; I think the issue stems from something on Steam's side, since I've also seen a variation of this where it removes the Warframe x64 executable as well and refuses to redownload it from CDNs too. This issue seems to be unique to Steam installs as well, as I've never seen it occur with standalone or EGS ones. I understand the Steam version of the game is basically a snapshot of a specific build in their CDNs for easier distribution (so Warframe's CDN provider, I think last I checked it's StackPath / Highwinds, has less to process), but it causes so many random issues with file integrity that I wish they'd let you link Steam Economy or something separate from the install entirely (i.e. just have Steam client installed, not the game installed in the library specifically). I'm unsure how that would work, but the Steam service itself continues to run in the background so I'm sure there may be a way to configure that properly.

Regardless, I hope this has helped; keep in mind that this doesn't account for anything like failing disks, removable drive installs, file access permissions, or other shenanigans that can cause this error. Those are all their own problems and have separate solutions, this is only for Steam installs that have missing or deleted files.