Fix: Dark Souls Prepare to Die Games for Windows Live Zero Day Protection not unlocking

After installing Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition, I ran into the following error message posted by Games for Windows Live as it attempted to perform its Zero Day Protection (ZDP) unlock:

“Games for Windows – LIVE has encountered a corrupted file. Please reinstall the game and try again.”

So, I reinstalled using the repair option. Same error message.

I uninstalled, rebooted and reinstalled. Same error message.

I uninstalled Microsoft Games for Windows Live Client and Marketplace and reinstalled using the GFWL setup on the Dark Souls disc.

I updated DirectX using the DirectX setup on the Dark Souls disc.

Same error message.

Solution

• After installing, open the Dark Souls folder in Explorer. On Windows 7 64-bit the default installation folder is “C:\Program Files (x86)\NAMCO BANDAI Games\DarkSouls”
• Go into the Zdp folder and run Zdp.exe.

For me, this successfully unlocked the files and allowed me to run the game.

I suspect the reason for the failure before is that one of the files that Zdp wants to unlock is DarkSouls.exe but it can’t access it because that file is the one you ran to launch the game.