Dead Rising 2: Off the Record

After three hours of troubleshooting Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, I came to a conclusion.  Capcom doesn't test their games enough.  I'm not talking about just play-testing here, I'm talking about just testing the installing and running of their games.  Okay, maybe it's not Capcom per se, and maybe it's one of their studios or a contractor thereof, but either way, I'm feeling pretty gonked off right now.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is a game with a near-record number of bugs that will attempt to hinder and stop people from playing at all points.  If you're having trouble playing the game, try a couple of these steps.  Who knows, maybe something here will help.  (Most of this only applies to Windows Vista, 7 or 8.)  I got most of these tips from the Steam forums, so thanks to all the folk that posted there.

1. Restart your PC.  Something somewhere might be gumming up the works.
2. Verify your game cache.  Go into Steam, and right-click your game.  Click Properties, then click the Local Files tab, then click Verify Integrity of Game Cache.  It'll take a while, but if there are bad files lurking in there, this should find, excise and replace them.
3. Go into the Control Panel, into Sounds, right-click your device (with the green tick) and click Properties, go into the Advanced tab.  You'll see a drop-down list showing various bit-rates and frequencies.  Try "24-bit, 48000 Hz (studio quality)" or "16-bit 14400 Hz (CD quality)".  Click Apply, then try to run the game.
4. Re-download and install the Games for Windows Live client.
5. Back up the game (Right-click the game, then click Backup Game Files), uninstall the game, and then re-install it on your C: drive (use the Backup and Restore option from the Steam menu in the main Steam window... it will ask you for the installation location during install).  Yes, this is dumb, and yes, this is what I spent three hours trying to work out, but this solved my issue.  I don't know why the game has to be installed on the C: drive, but in some cases, it does.

I hope this helps someone.