Using an ASRock Z370M Pro4 for Frostpunk 2, and it crashes during the anti-cheat scan every single time. Do I have to wipe and reinstall the runtime libraries?

This is a textbook permissions clash. Checking log FP2-ERR-09 on Windows 10 22H2, standard runtime reinstalls usually get blocked by system permissions, making them useless. I wasted a few hours trying basic installs before realizing I had to right-click the installer and select Run as Administrator. After the fix, AIDA64 showed the controller response latency dropped from 0.46s to roughly 0.31s, and the 3DMark stress curves finally smoothed out. Running a system file check cleaned up about 2.7GB - 3.4GB of junk cache. Boot-to-menu time improved by about 4s - 6s. Just a heads-up: if you update your GPU drivers later, this validation bug might pop up again, so keep a close eye on your runtime versions.