Assault Squad Retail (Gold Collection) - authentication crashes after Windows 8.1
 

I can't find a different post that matches my issue but I did try first. :-?

I picked up the Men of War Gold Collection back in April and have played both Vietnam and Assault Squad flawlessly on Windows 8 for most of this year. Then came the Windows 8.1 upgrade last month. Now I am unable to launch AS for first time registration/serial validation, etc. I have done a complete uninstall and reinstall of Assault Squad multiple times. I have applied all patches through 2.05.15 (prior to Windows upgrade I was using 2.05.13 without issue).

How, however, it will not initialize for me to even have an opportunity to enter my registration key. This is all I can get:

http://i.imgur.com/NJmTGBR.jpg

It gives this message then crashes and windows attempts to find a fix (which it obviously can't).

I will note that Vietnam has been reinstalled since the Windows 8.1 upgrade and it prompted for my registration key and works just fine. Assault Squad does not appear to work in any form now however. I have also attempted to force Run as Administrator to no avail.

Any insight or suggestions would be appreciated.

Issue resolved.
 

Resolved it on my own after looking up Securom threads.

The lack of error messages confused the issue which was:

Bitdefender Total Security 2013
Turn off Active Virus Control and Securom launches.

Glad the game works. Finding irony that a security feature is flagged with virus like behavior however.

Hope this will be of use to others.

-A