Launcher broke since random crash

[Sezuel]

So yesterday, 6 Aug 2020, I was playing FFXIV just fine early in the morning however i stepped away for about ten minutes and came back to my system sitting on a black screen saying to install a boot device and press a key. I went in and verified all my hardware was properly installed and rebooted my system. Everything is working fine EXCEPT FFXIV.

The game now verifies the launcher is updated and hits the FFXIV splash but instead of loading up the login and news it instantly crashes.

I have since tried:

• attempt running without anti-virus
• a clean boot
• compatibility mode (win7 on my win10 machine)
• uninstalling, clearing any registry entries I could find, reinstalling FFXIV
• installing XIV onto a different device
• resetting my "internet options" and clearing the browse history
• rolling my windows install back to a previous version
• verified my OS, graphics and all hardware drivers were up to date

this is as far as it gets for a visual reference
https://i.imgur.com/UTY1nvi.png

so it seems that the crash I encountered actually corrupted some windows files that Final Fantasy XIV requires to proceed to the login screen, a full on reinstall of windows 10 fixed the issue, which thankfully is no longer as detrimental as a reinstall used to be.

edit: added to my list of attempted fixes
edit 2: added image for visual help
edit 3: found a solution