Games for Windows Live has decided to never launch again.

I'm not sure if you guys solve these kinds of problems, but since r/games, the Dark Souls General thread in /vg/, Microsoft ambassador service, steam forums, and general google searches haven't found anything so far, I figured it wouldn't hurt to give you guys a try before I directly call Microsoft service and deal with that bugbear.

The problem: my client of Games for Windows Live has lost the ability to launch at all. Symptoms include:

• Games running on GFWL will not launch, even through Steam.

• Launching the Marketplace directly only opens the title splash card for a few moments, then immediately closes.

• There is no error message.

• Trying to launch games running GFWL produce a similar effect; Steam games show the grey "preparing to launch" card, the cancel button greys out, the card closes, and nothing happens. Sometimes, after a restart, the Steam ad window will popup, indicating that the program closes itself or thinks that I have quit the game.

Things I have tried:

• Restarting my computer.

• Uninstalling and then reinstalling GFWL.

• Verifying the game cache of Dark Souls in Steam (this was the game I first noticed the problem on; I know now that it is not limited to Dark Souls because I downloaded a few free steam games that also run GFWL and they will not launch either).

• Uninstalling and then reinstalling Dark Souls.

• Uninstalling, manual removing of any related files, and then reinstalling of Dark Souls.

• Setting Steam, GFWL, Dark Souls to run as administrator.

• Setting Steam, GFWL, Dark Souls to run in a windows 7 compatible format (my current OS).

• Sacrificing goats.

Perhaps the only theory I have left involves something I found while scouring for forum threads where people have similar problems (I found an alarmingly high number of them, yet none of their solutions seem to work.); one solution involved setting GFWL into windows 7 compatibility mode in the installation process, including a screenshot of the option being selected during installation. The problem, however, is that when I try to install GFWL using the link on the official website, the installer they provide me provides no such window, instead doing all the installation in the background. This leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, the newest version of the installer is giving me the windows 8 version, which apparently behaves as previously mentioned.

Anyone have any ideas? All help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: Fucking SOLVED. Credit to WalrusSoup for the final solution, and everyone's help is greatly appreciated. Upvotes for everyone, well fucking done!