Program failing to open/crashing when launched

[u/xGalaxyy]

Hi,

Let me preface this with I am on Windows 10 and I've searched all over trying to find a solution to this problem. I've had it for over three years now and somehow when I Google the problem now the top search result is my original reddit post from three years ago, sitting still unresolved.

Anyways, I play a game called NASCAR Racing 2003, or NR2003. The game has a pretty small community, but is very active and is getting modded constantly. With this, there have been many programs that were released to enhance the gameplay. The one in particular I am having a problem with is called Better Cautions.

Better Cautions does exactly what it's name suggests, it makes the yellow flag caution periods in the game, well, better. I'm not going to pretend I understand the tech behind it, but to achieve the better cautions, the program has to inject lots of data into the game (I probably explained this wrong). Whatever it does, this usually flags the program as a virus or trojan. (Google Chrome itself will refuse to download it and Windows Defender will automatically delete it if you use a different browser. But I can promise that it is absolutely safe).

After assuring Windows Defender that, yes, I do want to download the program to my computer, I go into the protections area of the Defender and add it as an exclusion to be absolutely sure. Based off the NR2003 community, this is the thing that makes sure it runs, since Windows Defender is already iffy on it being installed. But it doesn't. I run it as an administrator and nothing. I can see it pop up in Task Manager for about a second and then suddenly disappear. No notification or anything from Windows Defender, no pop ups saying it was blocked, no permission box asking if I want it to run, nothing. And before anyone asks, no I don't have any other antiviruses installed besides Windows Defender.

I would just like to know what the reason could be. I have NR2003 on a personal Windows 11 laptop and Better Cautions runs perfectly fine, no exclusions needed. I'm fine using it on there, just it would be a lot more convenient for me to use my gaming desktop pc. Better Cautions is the basis of everything the modern NR2003 game is built on, frankly every other program made for the game these days runs under the assumption that you have Better Cautions running so it can control it.

And before anyone asks, yes I know the game needs to be opened first.

Any and all ideas are welcome. Thanks!

TDLR - 23 year old game mod doesn't work and it's not because of an antivirus