The Little PoroMolester That Could... Not Install League

(I dont know if this is technically a bug but it was the closest related option I could choose. Please move the thread accordingly if I stuck it in the wrong place)

Hi there,

I have been playing League for a number of years now and I have come to accept the little challenges that come with the client. On more than one occasion the client has buggered up on me and thanks to the archived boards of this forum and my own bit of ingenuity I have managed to fix them, I don't mind too much I find it almost fun to try and fix them. This time however I have hit a wall, I face a problem that has seemed to... evolve and adapt to my efforts at fixing it.

It all started earlier today, I was enjoying watching the final match between G-REX and DSM and proceeded to load into a summoners rift (as you do). Things were, as they have been for a while now, fine and dandy, ping was fine, frames were fine and the less said about my cs the better. Then all of a sudden everything froze on the screen, the minions caster blasts were suspended in mid air and I had just enough time to lament my would-be play of the game before the game closed on me entirely. After first attempting to reopen the client I was greeted by a windows-style message that told me my installation was corrupt and needed to repair itself. "Should be fine right?" I thought. I raised an eyebrow when I saw the optimistic "Repairing" message turn into a "Repairing Failed" message. The proceeding FAQ said that a simple reboot should be enough to fix it, "turn it off and on again" a truth that works far more often than it should. After the reboot I went to try again to launch the game, this time, to my delight, I was greeted with the usual league of legends icon in the middle of my screen, and then... Nothing. No error message, no nothing. I noted the task would appear on my manager for about 5 seconds and then dissapear with the icon. Right, okay now is when we run through the motions, Anti Virus exemptions, compatibility modes, admin permissions. After fiddling with various settings all over the shop I managed to get the icon to stay for a little longer before vanishing and giving me nothing, failing this I tried the hextech Repair tool and set it to re-patch. "It has to be a patch thing right?" Oh how naive I was. The repair tool was unable to re-patch the game (of course) due to an error about a file already existing in one of the update folders deep withing the Riot Games folder (in a location that didn't exist even when I spent a good 20 minutes looking for it)

Act II is where it gets really fun. Shortly after the repair tool failed my OS reminded me that the system found some broken registry files and driver software (Im assuming they were unrelated to the league situation as ive been ignoring that icon for a while now...) So I figured fixing them and rebooting again might just knock everything back into place. HAH!. After the reboot I tried for a third time to launch the client in the hopes of some sort of auto recovery, this time, to my delight, I didnt even get a League of Legends icon. I click the launcher, I run the exe as administrator and, same as before where the process comes up in the manager but only for a second or so and its gone again. I dive into the League folders and attempt to launch the client through the backdoor with one of the other launcher files only to be greeted with an infinite loop of 'Your files are corrupt and need repairing' 'The files cannot be repaired'. So, I gave in, "Okay fine you got me, I'll do a clean install". While I was in the league folders I ran the uninstall program to get rid of the game and start again, it uninstalled super quickly and left... the C:\Riot Games folder behind, granted it was 3.5GB smaller than it was but still. "Well thats never done that before", so I right click>deleted, the windows green bar thing was there that shows you the files your deleting and its progress, it finished and I rubbed my hands together at a job well done.... Not only was the folder still there but my recycle bin was empty and the folder was still full of all the files it said it deleted. So I right click>delete again. Nothing. No bar of progress, no acknowledgment by my pc at all that I had done anything. Failing all of the above I put the indestructible folder to one side for the moment and went to the League website to download a brand new launch exe, I opened my downloads folder, located the League NA installer, double clicked it and the usual 'would you like to give this file permission' came up, after much patient waiting I am blessed with... nothing. So once again I go through the paces of checking all the permissions and exemptions and rebooting. Failing yet again I locate a slightly older installer that I had kept the last time most of this happened, the installer opens successfully! Hurrah! Im greeted with the window of Ziggs offering to install everything for me. I get the progress bar, it gets as far as installing DirectX9 and BOOM ERROR! cannot install directx9 child killed : unknown signal. GREAT! My severe eye-twitching had just about reached critical levels when I found a thread with this exact problem in it saying there was an alternate installer and directions how to use it. Love it, Rito solving problems I never knew I had, alternate installer downloaded, ready to go, running smoothly, run the new .exe... BAM infinite Repair Loop. Okay okay its time for the big guns, boot into safe mode, force-delete the omnipotent Riot Games folder and do a system restore before all this bs ever happened. Easy right? Well not only did brute force, several uninstall programs and an eye-watering amount of bad language still not succeed in removing this folder, but my PC apparently does not have a previous safe point to revert to. My only remaining option is to reset my pc (which I would really rather not do) and hope for the best.

In short, all variations of the LoL downloader refuse to open no matter what modes or settings I put them in. The older versions have killed children errors in them and the alternate launcher to fix this gets stuck in an infinite repair loop. Also the uninstall process left some un-deletable files behind. I have tried all the usual troubleshooting methods and most of the unusual ones found deep in the forums, they have helped to some extent but I eventually hit an error wall or infinite loop.

Any help that anyone can provide me on this will be met with huge amounts of adoration and a humorous emoji.

I'm really hoping there's an easy and obvious solution to this that i've missed and we can all laugh about how much of a dunce I am afterwards.

Thanks in advance, PM