Game crash upon startup after graphics card update

[BIna]

I recently updated my graphics card (nothing out of the ordinary, just a pretty standard update), and now CK3 is unable to start up. Every time I click "play" on the game launcher, the game will attempt to launch, but then crash quickly after. I do not have any mods active. I tried deleting the pdx_settings.txt file and relaunching the game, I tried validating game files via Steam, but neither of those have worked. I tried this both on the latest version (1.7) and on a previous version (1.6.0.2), but both versions run into the same issue.

When I deleted pdx_settings.txt and validated files, by the way, Steam didn't recover pdx_settings.txt. That only refreshed when I launched the launcher. I considered reinstalling the game, but was told that if the issue is the game not configuring graphics card settings right, then reinstalling would not fix this issue.

I have attached the error log from the crash for reference. Briefly looking through it, it does seem like the main catalyst for the crash is a graphics card issue, but I do not know how to fix this because the game does not respond to me manually manipulating the pdx_settings.txt file. I was wondering if anyone knows anything about how to fix this issue so the game is playable again.

For reference, I tried launching another PDX game (Stellaris) and I did not encounter this issue, so I can be sure that this is a CK3-specific issue.

 

[AndrewT]

BTW there is a bad mod shown at the start of that error.log

I will guess you have an nVidia card as that is the most common. If so:

- uninstall its driver and all other nVidia software
- reboot
- install August 2022 https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
- reboot again

Good luck!

 

[BIna]

BTW there is a bad mod shown at the start of that error.log

I will guess you have an nVidia card as that is the most common. If so:

- uninstall its driver and all other nVidia software
- reboot
- install August 2022 https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
- reboot again

Good luck!

I'm not sure why that mod is displayed there since it isn't active when I launched the game. It's not even in the playset selected.

But thank you! I will have to try this fix the next time I have time, and I will see if it works or not afterwards.

 

[BIna]

BTW there is a bad mod shown at the start of that error.log

I will guess you have an nVidia card as that is the most common. If so:

- uninstall its driver and all other nVidia software
- reboot
- install August 2022 https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
- reboot again

Good luck!

I have uninstalled my graphics driver and reinstalled the latest graphics driver compatible with my laptop (472.84) and tried again. This is the error log I got when it crashed. It seems like updating my graphics driver has unfortunately not resolved the issue, and since this is the latest version available to my laptop, there's nothing more I can do with my graphics driver to solve this issue.

For the record, the NVIDIA driver download criteria I had to use for my laptop model was GeForce 10 series (Notebook), GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, Windows 10 64-bit, Standard driver type, English (US). Version 472.84 is the latest driver available to these specifications.

Also, my latest CK3 save file is last modified on 9/24/2022, so this issue with booting is extremely recent.

I have also tried booting Stellaris and EU4. Both games boot just fine. So far, CK3 has been the only game I play that has had this specific issue with graphics drivers.

 

[AndrewT]

For the record, the NVIDIA driver download criteria I had to use for my laptop model was GeForce 10 series (Notebook), GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, Windows 10 64-bit, Standard driver type, English (US). Version 472.84 is the latest driver available to these specifications.

That's odd, as I went through those same options and ended up here:

GeForce Game Ready Driver | 517.48 | Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 | NVIDIA

Download the English (US) GeForce Game Ready Driver for Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 systems. Released 2022.9.27

www.nvidia.com

Only 1 day old!

Probably best to do another clean reinstall of nVidia to get to it, due to jumping so many versions.

 

[BIna]

That's odd, as I went through those same options and ended up here:

GeForce Game Ready Driver | 517.48 | Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 | NVIDIA

Download the English (US) GeForce Game Ready Driver for Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11 systems. Released 2022.9.27

www.nvidia.com

Only 1 day old!

Probably best to do another clean reinstall of nVidia to get to it, due to jumping so many versions.

I had already attempted to install that one, but it said that it was not compatible with my laptop, and to use the advanced search to specify "standard driver type". When I did that, 472.84 came up as the latest version.

In any case, my game was running fine just 3 days ago, and that was before I had done any updates to my graphics card, which means an older version (I didn't check which version it was, unfortunately, so I don't know which, but it was from over a year ago) was working just fine with this game. So I don't see why a newer graphics driver would suddenly not work with this game now.

 

[AndrewT]

Odd ... you may need help from nVidia support on that.

Do you still get those DX11 errors in that log?

 

[BIna]

Odd ... you may need help from nVidia support on that.

Do you still get those DX11 errors in that log?

I can't really tell. I reinstalled CK3, and now any error logs generated are just blank files, so I'm not really sure what happened there.

Another friend of mine told me they were also having trouble getting the game to boot. I think I may wait until the next patch drops and see if the game will boot then.

 

[AndrewT]

If there was a bug in this game that stopped it working at all for everyone, we'd know about it well before now! So I doubt a patch will fix your problem, which is more likely in Windows somewhere.

If there are no errors in that log we've made progress it seems, but clearly not enough. If you run ck3.exe directly from File Explorer now, what happens?

 

[BIna]

If there was a bug in this game that stopped it working at all for everyone, we'd know about it well before now! So I doubt a patch will fix your problem, which is more likely in Windows somewhere.

If there are no errors in that log we've made progress it seems, but clearly not enough. If you run ck3.exe directly from File Explorer now, what happens?

I tried running ck3.exe directly and it crashes the same way as if I run it from the launcher.

Also I figured out why the error.log wasn't generating anything. When the game reinstalled, the pdx_settings.txt had

"device"={
version=0
value="default"
}

instead of

"device"={
version=0
value="NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti"
}

And for the renderer, it had OpenGL instead of DX11. When I fixed both of these, error logs generated once again listed reasons as to why the game crashed, although this did not fix the game crashing issue.

 

[AndrewT]

Okay, let's start from scratch! Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-CK3
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/CK3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3 folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add CK3.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam CK3 or Documents CK3 locations, before installing again.


If that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

 

[BIna]

Okay, let's start from scratch! Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-CK3
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/CK3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3 folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add CK3.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam CK3 or Documents CK3 locations, before installing again.


If that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

I followed every step, and unfortunately the game still crashed. However, this time, at least the first screen of the loading screen appeared for a few seconds before the game crashed, instead of just a black screen, so that's a slight improvement.

I have found all the .txt and .log files you requested and attached them here.

 

[AndrewT]

No mention of CK3 in that dxdiag , I see. That would typically point to an issue outside the game.

But as you can see, still those DX11 errors in that log. Right click on ck3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, refresh rate 60.

Is that any better?

 

[BIna]

No mention of CK3 in that dxdiag , I see. That would typically point to an issue outside the game.

But as you can see, still those DX11 errors in that log. Right click on ck3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, refresh rate 60.

Is that any better?

I don't see the option for fullscreen optimisations?

 

[AndrewT]

That may be due to your unusual edition of Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB, which I don't recall coming across before. I see it is intended for use in situations where frequent updates would be a problem such as hospitals. I'm sure we don't test our games on it. And it becomes unsupported in about 2 weeks' time.

Were you at all considering going to Win11 any time soon? If so this might be a great time for that!

 

[BIna]

That's a mite inconvenient at this time, since it's halfway through the semester right now. But I will start backing everything up in the meantime.

Is there a way to disable fullscreen optimisations via Steam program launch options?

 

[AndrewT]

It's a Windows setting, nothing to do with Steam, so I'm sure not.

Whether there's any way to do it in, say, the registry is beyond my Windows knowledge I'm afraid.

 

[BIna]

It's a Windows setting, nothing to do with Steam, so I'm sure not.

Whether there's any way to do it in, say, the registry is beyond my Windows knowledge I'm afraid.

I have an update: I updated my OS to the more standard version of win10 (not the weird version) and updated my NVIDIA to the latest 517, and it seems like the problem has been resolved. Thank you for your help!

 

[AndrewT]