Galaxy version hanging at first splash screen

[DragonKingReborn]

Galaxy version hanging at first splash screen

Hi there, last night I tried to boot up TW3 for the first time in about a week. It hung on the very first splash screen, the one with legal stuff in a golden/brownish colour on a black background. I've tried rebooting and reinstalling graphics drivers, also tried verifying/repairing through galaxy. But each time it hung at that same screen and when I alt-tabbed out, it had changed my desktop resolution from 4K to 2560x1440 (which is the res I run the game at).

Today, I tried uninstalling galaxy and then run the game from without it. That worked (and all my other galaxy games work on galaxy), so I reinstalled galaxy and had the same issue arise again. Now I've uninstalled Galaxy (not an achievement hunter and the verify/repair function and game time counters are only useful if I can play the game) but the game shows the same issue galaxy was having.

Do I need to reinstall the game?

It hasn't generated any crash reports so I can't upload that.

Spec's
i7 4790K
16GB RAM
2x GTX 980 Ti
SSD
Samsung 4K monitor - run windows in 4k but scale down for TW3 to 2560x1440
latest windows 10 and nvidia drivers.

All other clients work with their games - Origin loaded and played DA:I and DA:O, Steam loaded and played Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of Mordor.
Galaxy also successfully loaded and played the Wolf Among Us and Pillars of Eternity.

So I'm left to assume the problem is with the Witcher, but just not sure if there is any way around it that isn't the 'nuclear' option of reinstalling the whole game.

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[SigilFey]

Try editing the properties of your ...Documents\The Witcher 3... folder, and set Permissions to "Everyone". If that doesn't fix it, do the same for the game installation folder and Galaxy's installation folder.

 

[DragonKingReborn]

Thank you for that, I'll give it a try. In the meantime I've discovered that turning off the GeForce Experience "Sharing" overlay allows me to play the game, I just can't take screenshots or videos.

I can use the Galaxy client for screenshots, of course, but I try to avoid using game client overlays. They've caused me nothing but trouble in the past.

I will definitely try your suggestion tonight, though - thanks again.

 

[DragonKingReborn]

Try editing the properties of your ...Documents\The Witcher 3... folder, and set Permissions to "Everyone". If that doesn't fix it, do the same for the game installation folder and Galaxy's installation folder.

Thanks again for your suggestion, but the issue is still present.

If you have any other ideas I'd gladly welcome them, but in the meantime I can play (and take screenshots using Ansel) with Shadowplay off, and if I really felt the need to record video I could use MSi Afteburner's overlay - I just don't like the performance hit that creates.

 

[SigilFey]

Argh! So...many...3rd-party...programs... Can't... (Gurgling.)

Here's my 2 cents:

Geforce Experience causes more trouble than it's worth. In general, it's "optmized" settings are...nowhere close. Better to just learn each game yourself as you go. (Plus, it's often a bad idea to upgrade drivers unless there's an issue. The trend of constantly updating to the latest version is not actually necessary nor helpful to your system.)

Galaxy is not necessary. I've got my GOG games installed by directly downloading the installation packages through my browser and installing them locally. You can keep the actual installation packages for quick re-installs if needed. My preference for all GOG software.

I disable all overlays for everything, along with many "features". I guess a good metaphor is to look at installed programs like nutrition: if it's not something your system needs to function -- it's empty calories being turned into fat and slowing everything down. Taking time to "Disable" all unneeded programs through msconfig and services.msc might help out. (You can always manually start them if you want them.)

Do keep up with any Windows 10 updates. It will likely be a year or two before things really start to smooth out. That could be a factor, too. (Although, as soon as you're sailing smoothly, stop updating. I, personally, disable Windows Update and manually rename all of the associated .EXEs...as they seem to decide on their own that they shouldn't be disabled.)

Last suggestion, insofar as recording videos through Nvidia software, is to disable SLI and try recording while only one card is running. The game doesn't always cooperate with SLI, and having a second program trying to grab renders might be causing an issue for that specific software (especially if it's trying to be nice about the capture. Afterburner or FRAPs will just bully your frames and take what they want.)

 

[DragonKingReborn]

Thank you again - I definitely don't allow GFE to "Optimise". Made that mistake once (with Batman: Arkham Knight) and will never do so again.

I am currently running it without Galaxy (and having no issues - besides the GFE one), in fact, the only reason I started using it in the first place was to "verify" an install of TW3 last year.

Thank you for the other suggestions, I'll have a look at the various 'services' that could be disabled, but with regards to Afterburner...yeah...it is a frame rate bully, for sure.

Thank you for all your help.

 

[SigilFey]

No sweat! Happy slaughtering!

 

[Drakeskull]

Rather than making a new thread I figured I would add in on this one since I am having the same issue. It had been a couple months since I played, and it was working fine then. Updated my video drivers last week, and I think its what caused the issues. Only way after hours of trouble shooting I have been able to get it to work is to just uninstall everything Nvidia. It gets to the first screen where it says press space to continue and the second time you hit space it dumps to desktop.

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (3221225477), Error reading location 0x00000000

1080ti FE
2600k
16gig ram
windows 10 (creater update)
GOG version of TW3, bought the base game, and added on the expansions so its not the GOTY edition. Not sure if that would make a difference.

Also there is another guy who is experiencing the same thing after the driver update on the Geforce forum. I believe its something to do with Geforce experience, but uninstalling it doesnt fix the issue. It was only after using DDC and running with no nvidia software that I could get it to work. I might try next to run DDC again, then use a custom instead of express install and just nix Geforce experience. I did like shadowplay though =/

 

[Drakeskull]

I fixed it! I had a program... I guess a driver? called duet display that allows me to use my ipad as a 3rd display... it was garbage from the start so I never used it, but never uninstalled it. I guess it was causing some conflicts with the nvidia drivers or something because after uninstalling that everything is working 100%

 

[DragonKingReborn]

The symptoms of your issue weren't quite the same as mine, pressing space bar did nothing for me. The entire thing just froze and I had to CTRL-ALT-DEL out through Task Manager. Good that you've found the issue, though. I'm not using an iPad as a third display, but need to check through my various services to see if any can be shut off.

I definitely miss Shadowplay....

 

[socialentry]

Glad you got it working!!

 

[jolly0]

DragonKingReborn
I had the same problem using two gtx 980 ti:s in sli, it would always freeze in the first splash screen. It has something to do with sli not working anymore. I've pretty much played since launch with no issues, this started for me sometime in may I think. Since then I upgraded my gpus, and it works beautifully with a single card, but once again when I fire up sli it would hang. There is a fix but It's a bit tedious to do every single time when launching the game. If you press the windows button the moment the game launches and keep the window minimized for a few seconds it will launch.
Hope it works for you as well.

 

[SigilFey]

DragonKingReborn
I had the same problem using two gtx 980 ti:s in sli, it would always freeze in the first splash screen. It has something to do with sli not working anymore. I've pretty much played since launch with no issues, this started for me sometime in may I think. Since then I upgraded my gpus, and it works beautifully with a single card, but once again when I fire up sli it would hang. There is a fix but It's a bit tedious to do every single time when launching the game. If you press the windows button the moment the game launches and keep the window minimized for a few seconds it will launch.
Hope it works for you as well.

This is essentially forcing the game into "Windowed Mode". Have you tried setting the display type to Windowed or Borderless in the settings?

 

[jolly0]

Can't believe I hadn't tried that. Switching to borderless fixed the issue for me. Thank you.

Edit: Spoke a bit too soon. Switching to borderless does get rid of the hanging, but it also disables sli functionality. I get worse performance than with a single card. I guess I'll just have to start in borderless and then switch to full screen.

 

[SigilFey]

Can't believe I hadn't tried that. Switching to borderless fixed the issue for me. Thank you.

Edit: Spoke a bit too soon. Switching to borderless does get rid of the hanging, but it also disables sli functionality. I get worse performance than with a single card. I guess I'll just have to start in borderless and then switch to full screen.

Yeah, that sounds right. I never use SLI, so I'm not too knowledgeable about the details of mechanics, but I do know that SLI does not play nicely with any program that requires accurate frame timing. I believe it's why, to this day, almost no games officially support it. I know some people have gotten working with TW3, though. Another consideration is to download Nvidia Inspector and see if there are any hidden / custom settings for TW3's SLI functionality. That might help.

If possible, try fiddling with the way both cards draw frames. Ideally, having them alternate whole frames would probably be best for TW3. (As opposed to methods that split indivdual frames between the two cards like horizontal stripes or a checkerboard.) Also, it's always important for the game to be capped at 60 FPS or less in some fashion, though results / sweet spot will vary from rig to rig.

 

[DragonKingReborn]

jolly0
​​​​​​​
Hi there - I gave your method a try but had no luck. Giving up - I went into NVidia Control Panel (for another game entirely) and clicked on TW3 by accident. EVERY other time the drivers have updated, it has set SLI to Alternate Frame Rendering 1 by default (not even allowing me to change it if I wanted to), so I hadn't bothered looking. It had set itself to "SLi "Custom". I switched to AFR1 and it WORKED! But my frame rate had gone from 60 to 20. So I tried AFR2 and now I hover around 55-58, which is perfectly manageable. A little annoying, since I never USED to get frame drops, but manageable.

Can't believe I didn't think to check NCP just in case, but there it is.

 

[SigilFey]

jolly0

Hi there - I gave your method a try but had no luck. Giving up - I went into NVidia Control Panel (for another game entirely) and clicked on TW3 by accident. EVERY other time the drivers have updated, it has set SLI to Alternate Frame Rendering 1 by default (not even allowing me to change it if I wanted to), so I hadn't bothered looking. It had set itself to "SLi "Custom". I switched to AFR1 and it WORKED! But my frame rate had gone from 60 to 20. So I tried AFR2 and now I hover around 55-58, which is perfectly manageable. A little annoying, since I never USED to get frame drops, but manageable.

Can't believe I didn't think to check NCP just in case, but there it is.

Whatever was done with the engine (beginning in 1.2X, I think) definitely introduced framerate dips, but also made the pop in almost completely stop (on my end, at least).

Try locking your Frame Limit to 55 or 56. Thats actually really smooth FPS, and if there's performance overhead, you probably won't detect the drops or there won't be any. Smooth gameplay is the result of steady FPS, not high FPS. (Remember that most TV shows are only 24 FPS, and movies hover around 32. IMAX / 3D films sometimes use 48.)

 

[DragonKingReborn]

Whatever was done with the engine (beginning in 1.2X, I think) definitely introduced framerate dips, but also made the pop in almost completely stop (on my end, at least).

Try locking your Frame Limit to 55 or 56. Thats actually really smooth FPS, and if there's performance overhead, you probably won't detect the drops or there won't be any. Smooth gameplay is the result of steady FPS, not high FPS. (Remember that most TV shows are only 24 FPS, and movies hover around 32. IMAX / 3D films sometimes use 48.)

That's a good idea - I'll give it a go. Thank you again for your help and advice - it's very much appreciated.

 

[SigilFey]

That's a good idea - I'll give it a go. Thank you again for your help and advice - it's very much appreciated.

Let us know how it goes!