[shvcnear]

So I've been playing through GTA4, 17 hours on steam. One day I try to start it up, it says GTA4 has stopped working. I run the laucher as admin, and now it gets to a black screen and then has a loading symbol for a mouse and never moves past it. Anybody know what would cause this? I installed the latest GFWL and RGSC multiple times, no dice. I reinstalled the game entirely, no dice.

This post has been edited by shvcnear on Sunday, Jul 22 2012, 05:12

[mkey82]

Have you installed anything new recently?

[shvcnear]

The only thing worth mentioning was possibly Max Payne 3, but I'm not sure if I have played it fine since.

[jpm1]

try reinstalling DX libraries

[mkey82]

Try using xliveless to bypass GFWL.

[shvcnear]

Tried both of those, no dice. Same exact issue. Goes to a black screen and then I have the circle icon for my mouse to show that it is loading but nothing ever happens.

[miromiro]

Try out this:
1) Un-install GTA IV completely. Reboot.
2) Re-install original program WITHOUT the update. Reboot.
3) Install the update. Reboot.
4) Install the newest Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x64)

Besides, try deleting your game settings.

[mkey82]

Do you have some disk emulation program like Daemon tools installed? Those can cause conflicts with Securom.

[shvcnear]

To miromiro, I have it on steam so I can't do it without the update. I did go through a reinstall/redownload of everything again with reboots in between because what else can I do, no luck, though

To mkey, I have poweriso installed but I never use it and it doesn't start on it's own, I've had it installed the same length of time as GTAIV back when it was working.

[mkey82]

Even though you redownloaded the game, try running the "verify integrity of game cache" on GTAIV.

[jpm1]

what did you do/install between the moment it worked fine and the bugs . do you run any mods , if yes try without . post your specs , please

[shvcnear]

I did verify the cache, no luck there.

My specs:

560TI (@975mhz)
i5 2500k (@4.5ghz)
8gb ram
windows 7 with latest service pack

As for what I installed/uninstalled, the only thing I can think of that would be relevant would be max payne 3, which I uninstalled. I went through and uninstalled everything involved, GFWL and rockstar social. Still no luck. I'm really tempted to reformat my hard drive at this point, for gta4 and a few other reasons.

[mkey82]

Have you reinstalled the VC++ libraries? Those are required for Securom and if anything is wrong with them the game will crash.

If you look in control panel > programs and features you'll see various "Microsoft Visual C++" entries. If you manually uninstalled any of them, that may be causing this problem.
Go to the game directory, there should be a folder named "install" or "extras" where all the 3rd party stuff is stored, vc_setup.exe should be among them.

This post has been edited by mkey82 on Friday, Aug 3 2012, 10:42