I will once in awhile open Fritz 12 choose the “Play Fritz” option, the two windows (opening interface IIRC and activating the F12 engine) will show and go away but nothing opens. I haven’t found a final answer yet, but I’ve also found with other games not starting that the Conexant Smart Audio process (SmartAudio.exe *32) has some kind of memory leak (it’s using 650-700 MB over a norm of around 40 when this happens.) I kill off the process, restart the game and it loads fine with OK audio.
I’ve been waiting for this to happen again in F12 and I’ll apply the same solution and see if that does it. But I’m pretty sure it’s a problem with that process and not the games or F12.
Left click on the Application Menu icon (top left corner of the screen; looks like the letter ‘T’ inside a green circle), point to ‘Activation’ at the bottom of the drop down menu, and over to the right for ‘Update Program’.
I’ve found a solution for this part of the problem.
Sometimes Fritz doesn’t completely close out when you instruct it to shut down.
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL, open the Task Manager, go to the Processes tab, highlight the process named ChessProgram12.exe, and click the End Process button. When the WARNING: popup appears, click the Yes button.