UNOFFICIAL troubleshooting FAQ (Please read before posting) Some great Vista fix
[size=14pt]If you have experienced any problem and found a solution - Please report it [iurl=http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=4689.0]here[/iurl]! [/size]******************************************************************************* This is a work in progress *************************************************************************************I am starting a troubleshooting FAQ. I will give hints a good procedure for everything from Windows XP maintenance, drivers installation, links......[size=10pt]Those procedure are really important, look thru the topics and you will see, simply by following these procedures, over 50% of the problems are fix.[/size]Any suggestions will be appreciated. Also, if you are using Vista, i will gladly take your advice and add them in. I don't have it so i cant tell what to do and how to do it.Thanks for your help.Mobidoy-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[size=10pt]WindowsXP maintenance[/size]If you want to have a chance to install the game and have it to work at first try, you should follow this procedure. Many installation problems and start errors have been fixed only by having the OS in good shape.1. Go to Windows update and download all of the updates that you will find, mostly critical ones.2. Use those 2 Registry cleaner. CCleaner and RegscrubXP2. Remove your virtual memory (Do it, next step is a full defrag then, we will create a permanent swap file)3. Use a good defrag utility JKDefrag Free DISKEEPER 30 day trial4. Create a new swap file and set the size yourself, the minimum and maximum size should be the same and something between 2 to 4 gigs5. Run [u=http://www.memtest86.com]Memtest[/U]What we did here was to get windows with the latest hotfix so we wont get weird installation bugs. Also we got our hard drive ready to copy the files of the game in one big chunk instead of in little fragments all over our hard drive which slow down everything cause our computer needs to look all over the place to find the information it needs.Last thing we did was to create a new swap file, virtual memory is used alot in the game and we don't want it to be full. With the size of the hard drives these days, 4 gigs is not a big loss and, it will give our computer plenty of space to work. We set the size for minimum and maximum the same thing so that way, the swap file always stays at the same spot on our hard drive and get fragmented (spread all over the disk) while using it.If something ain't clear enough or you don't know how to do it, let me know, i will explain in more details.[size=10pt]Video card removal and installation the RIGHT way[/size]This step is very important. Lots of problems come from video driver not installed properly. You may think that installing your video driver is simply downloading it and installing it over the old one. Well this is one of the major mistake !! So follow this and you should not have much problems.[size=10pt]****** Warning, dont use the NVIDIA Beta drivers 169.04 with Vista (and maybe XP) Thanks to Dateranoth see his post about it *******[/size]1. You need to download a couple of things:Video driver (Nvidia, Ati, Third party)Registry cleanerHere are the links:NVIDIAATIIf you own a laptop, display drivers don't get updated or are updated way too late. Good news, you can find a third party driver called OMEGA driver for your card.OmegaRegistry cleaner:RegscrubXPOki we are set, lets get to it.Here is a simple and well explained way to do it... Almost automated (Thanks to Mopy for this)The correct method for uninstalling or updating graphics card drivers- Note that not following this method and installing new drivers over the top of existing ones may not fix problems it otherwise would have.a) Download and install driver cleaner: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745b) Head into control panel > add remove programs and select your Nvidia or ATI display drivers and remove themc) Restart into safe mode - to get into safe mode keep pressing F8 while your machine is bootingd) Once in safe mode run driver cleaner, and clean using ATI or Nvidia setting depending on what card you havee) Restart into normal mode once cleaning is finishedf) Install your new drivers and restart after installation completesg) Enjoy your fresh new video card driversCheers,MopyNow the way i do it.... First thing to do, remove your actual driver/drivers (yes you could have more then one installed)Uninstalling ATI drivers with Add/Remove ProgramsATI Add/Remove Programs software uninstall utilityWhen uninstalling ATI drivers using "Add/Remove Programs", you may have an entry for "ATI - Software Uninstall Utility". The uninstall utility removes the ATI control panel or ATI catalyst control center, the ATI display driver, any ATI demos, and the uninstall utility itself. This utility is the easiest way to uninstall the ATI software. Just select the uninstall utility, click the button, follow the prompts, and then reboot.If you don't have the uninstall utility then you should have the "ATI Display Driver". You probably also have either the "ATI Control Panel" or the "ATI Catalyst Control Center". First uninstall the "ATI Control Panel" or the "ATI Catalyst Control Center" if you have either of those. You will be prompted to restart the computer but you can cancel out of that. Then uninstall the "ATI Display Driver".ATI video card dual output remove windowIf you have more than one ATI driver installed, then a window will ask you to select which driver to uninstall. In this example, both drivers are installed for a single Radeon 9700 Pro video card. The "Radeon 9700 PRO" entry is the output for the main monitor and "Radeon 9700 PRO - Secondary" is the output for the secondary monitor. Both drivers are listed even if you're only using one monitor. You should uninstall both of them. If you have any other ATI display adapters in the computer then they will appear in this list as well. Put a check to the left of all of the display drivers and then click "OK" and follow the prompts and reboot.If you have Catalyst drivers installed but for some reason you cannot remove them in "Add/Remove Programs", you can download a copy of the ATI Catalyst uninstaller utility from ATI's support site. Unfortunately I can't give you a direct link to the utility anymore because the morons at ATI decided to prevent links into their support site. You'll just have to navigate their labarynthine website on your own. Start here and click the "Customer Care" link at the top of the page. If a drop-down menu appears when you move the mouse over "Customer Care" then just ignore it and click "Customer Care" at the top. Type "catalyst maintenance utilities" into the search box in the upper left part of the window and then click the "GO" button. Look in the search results for the "CATALYST - ATI Maintenance Utilities" link and then click it. Click the "cat-uninstaller.exe" link to download the utility. The only difference between this utility and the "ATI - Software Uninstall Utility" in "Add/Remove Programs" is that the downloaded version does not uninstall itself. Uninstalling NVIDIA drivers with Add/Remove ProgramsNVIDIA Add/Remove Programs NVIDIA driversIf you see an entry which says "NVIDIA Graphics Drivers" or "NVIDIA Display Drivers" then select it and remove it. But sometimes NVIDIA display drivers appear as "NVIDIA Drivers" as seen above. This version appears because NVIDIA makes more than just display adapters. They also make motherboard chipsets which means that there is more than one kind of NVIDIA driver which can be removed in "Add/Remove Programs". If you see something like "NVIDIA nForce Drivers", don't remove them. Those are motherboard chipset drivers. In the case shown above, just select "NVIDIA Drivers" and click the "Change/Remove" button.NVIDIA remove display driver verifyIf the only NVIDIA driver installed is a display driver, then it will ask you to verify if you want to remove your display driver.NVIDIA remove multiple driversIf there is more than one NVIDIA driver, then it will allow you to select which drivers to remove. Click "Remove only the following" and then make sure that only "NVIDIA Display Driver" has a check to the left of it. Click "Remove" and then it will uninstall your display driver and leave the rest of the NVIDIA drivers installed.If you have more than one NVIDIA display adapter installed in your computer, removing the display driver will remove the drivers for all display adapters which are using it. Cleaning the registryNext thing to do is to clean the registry of any unused key, use regscrubXP, it is pretty straight forward, start it, click on RegScrubXP finds problems, then let it go, it can take several minutes. Then when it is done, click on select all problems then on Fix Selected problems. Repeat the procedure, you never know, usually it finds some errors the second time around but, it is much faster.Now lets reboot.Once windows xp is back u and running you will have windows that will pop up saying that new device has been found. Cancel out of those windows, windows want to install generic drivers for our video card and monitor but, we don't want that. Next, run the driver setup that we downloaded earlier. let it go thru all the procedure, if it ask to reboot, do s
ne final thing to do, on our "The Witcher" DVD there is a folder called Directx, Nice, this is what we want to install !! Guess what, it is easy, find the file called setup and follow the instruction on screen. If you didnt update window correctly you may get some errors here (ex: error saying that the cryptographic service is not working).All done cool !! [size=10pt]Vista problems & Solution[/size]Thanx to Mopi on this oneYou cannot see the cursor on Vista ?Try heading into control panel > mouse > disable pointer precision. Thanx to ywfn on this oneIf your game is regularly crashing with 32-bit Vista, give this a try:From the Windows command line: BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2688Then you must reboot your computer.Then start Witcher and see if you crash anymore.I was crashing roughly every hour before, now I've been playing for hours without a single crash since making the change. I've only tested one night of play so far, so could be a coincidence. Would be interested to hear if it works/doesn't work for others.For those who want an explanation before blindly trying it:The Witcher executable is a 32-bit app compiled with "large address awareness", what this means is that the maximum amount of address space it can make use of is:On 64-bit Vista: 4GBOn 32-bit Vista: whatever IncreaseUserVa is set to (defaults to 2048MB)(Note: address space doesn't necessarily equate to real memory used, so I'm not saying that The Witcher actually makes use of >2GB RAM, I'm pretty sure it doesn't)I tried this because I read that people on 64-bit Vista weren't crashing, so it seemed like a possible reason.BTW, the valid values for IncreaseUserVa are 2048 to 3072, but I wouldn't suggest setting it much higher than the 2688 number I gave above, especially if you have a video card with a lot of memory on it, your Windows kernel may not end up with enough address space to operate properly. If you have problems you can always boot in safe mode and change it back to a lower value, or the normal 2048.Thanx to ChilliIBean on this oneI figured out a way!I have two Seagate SATA 3.0Gbps 80GB hard drives. I have Vista 32bit and the paging file on one drive. I completely removed the paging file from the same drive where Vista is installed and created the page file on my second hard drive. The intermittent crashes stopped and also the intermittent audio/video stuttering stopped!To change the pagefile location go to -> windows menu -> settings -> control panel -> system -> advanced system settings -> click "settings" button under Performance -> click on "Advanced" tab -> click on "Change" button -> click on drive you have Vista installed to highlight it then click on "no paging file" then click on your 2nd hard drive to highlight it then click on "System managed size" then click on "OK" button. It will ask you to reboot to remove the page file in the vista drive and create a system managed page file on the 2nd drive. I know you need two hard drives for this to work. Embarrassed [size=10pt]Tweaks[/size]Here is 2 tweaks that you can do to your system while playing the gameCpu affinity: If you have a cpu with more then one core, well while running The witcher, only one core is used to the max. Here is the deal.Start the game, alt tab out of it. go in task manager (ctrl-alt-del) -> Task Manager -> Find Witcher.exe and right click on it -> click on define affinity -> just click on OK in the new window. Close task manager and get back in the game.Defining priority: This is a good improvement speed for anyone that has a medium to low end computer. ***** Dont set it to realtime !!! *****Start the game, alt tab out of it. go in task manager (ctrl-alt-del) -> Task Manager -> Find Witcher.exe and right click on it -> go to Define priority -> Set it to high. Close task manager and get back in the game.If you have any kind of security program (firewall, anti-virus, defragmenter) that are running in the background (present in task manager) it would be a good idea to close them while playing.[size=10pt]Important links[/size]TAGES Website for driver updates to the copy protection system. Visual C++ SP1 x86 run time Visual C++ SP1 x64 run time
[size=14pt]If you have experienced any problem and found a solution - Please report it [iurl=http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=4689.0]here[/iurl]! [/size]******************************************************************************* This is a work in progress *************************************************************************************I am starting a troubleshooting FAQ. I will give hints a good procedure for everything from Windows XP maintenance, drivers installation, links......[size=10pt]Those procedure are really important, look thru the topics and you will see, simply by following these procedures, over 50% of the problems are fix.[/size]Any suggestions will be appreciated. Also, if you are using Vista, i will gladly take your advice and add them in. I don't have it so i cant tell what to do and how to do it.Thanks for your help.Mobidoy-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[size=10pt]WindowsXP maintenance[/size]If you want to have a chance to install the game and have it to work at first try, you should follow this procedure. Many installation problems and start errors have been fixed only by having the OS in good shape.1. Go to Windows update and download all of the updates that you will find, mostly critical ones.2. Use those 2 Registry cleaner. CCleaner and RegscrubXP2. Remove your virtual memory (Do it, next step is a full defrag then, we will create a permanent swap file)3. Use a good defrag utility JKDefrag Free DISKEEPER 30 day trial4. Create a new swap file and set the size yourself, the minimum and maximum size should be the same and something between 2 to 4 gigs5. Run [u=http://www.memtest86.com]Memtest[/U]What we did here was to get windows with the latest hotfix so we wont get weird installation bugs. Also we got our hard drive ready to copy the files of the game in one big chunk instead of in little fragments all over our hard drive which slow down everything cause our computer needs to look all over the place to find the information it needs.Last thing we did was to create a new swap file, virtual memory is used alot in the game and we don't want it to be full. With the size of the hard drives these days, 4 gigs is not a big loss and, it will give our computer plenty of space to work. We set the size for minimum and maximum the same thing so that way, the swap file always stays at the same spot on our hard drive and get fragmented (spread all over the disk) while using it.If something ain't clear enough or you don't know how to do it, let me know, i will explain in more details.[size=10pt]Video card removal and installation the RIGHT way[/size]This step is very important. Lots of problems come from video driver not installed properly. You may think that installing your video driver is simply downloading it and installing it over the old one. Well this is one of the major mistake !! So follow this and you should not have much problems.[size=10pt]****** Warning, dont use the NVIDIA Beta drivers 169.04 with Vista (and maybe XP) Thanks to Dateranoth see his post about it *******[/size]1. You need to download a couple of things:Video driver (Nvidia, Ati, Third party)Registry cleanerHere are the links:NVIDIAATIIf you own a laptop, display drivers don't get updated or are updated way too late. Good news, you can find a third party driver called OMEGA driver for your card.OmegaRegistry cleaner:RegscrubXPOki we are set, lets get to it.Here is a simple and well explained way to do it... Almost automated (Thanks to Mopy for this)The correct method for uninstalling or updating graphics card drivers- Note that not following this method and installing new drivers over the top of existing ones may not fix problems it otherwise would have.a) Download and install driver cleaner: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745b) Head into control panel > add remove programs and select your Nvidia or ATI display drivers and remove themc) Restart into safe mode - to get into safe mode keep pressing F8 while your machine is bootingd) Once in safe mode run driver cleaner, and clean using ATI or Nvidia setting depending on what card you havee) Restart into normal mode once cleaning is finishedf) Install your new drivers and restart after installation completesg) Enjoy your fresh new video card driversCheers,MopyNow the way i do it.... First thing to do, remove your actual driver/drivers (yes you could have more then one installed)Uninstalling ATI drivers with Add/Remove ProgramsATI Add/Remove Programs software uninstall utilityWhen uninstalling ATI drivers using "Add/Remove Programs", you may have an entry for "ATI - Software Uninstall Utility". The uninstall utility removes the ATI control panel or ATI catalyst control center, the ATI display driver, any ATI demos, and the uninstall utility itself. This utility is the easiest way to uninstall the ATI software. Just select the uninstall utility, click the button, follow the prompts, and then reboot.If you don't have the uninstall utility then you should have the "ATI Display Driver". You probably also have either the "ATI Control Panel" or the "ATI Catalyst Control Center". First uninstall the "ATI Control Panel" or the "ATI Catalyst Control Center" if you have either of those. You will be prompted to restart the computer but you can cancel out of that. Then uninstall the "ATI Display Driver".ATI video card dual output remove windowIf you have more than one ATI driver installed, then a window will ask you to select which driver to uninstall. In this example, both drivers are installed for a single Radeon 9700 Pro video card. The "Radeon 9700 PRO" entry is the output for the main monitor and "Radeon 9700 PRO - Secondary" is the output for the secondary monitor. Both drivers are listed even if you're only using one monitor. You should uninstall both of them. If you have any other ATI display adapters in the computer then they will appear in this list as well. Put a check to the left of all of the display drivers and then click "OK" and follow the prompts and reboot.If you have Catalyst drivers installed but for some reason you cannot remove them in "Add/Remove Programs", you can download a copy of the ATI Catalyst uninstaller utility from ATI's support site. Unfortunately I can't give you a direct link to the utility anymore because the morons at ATI decided to prevent links into their support site. You'll just have to navigate their labarynthine website on your own. Start here and click the "Customer Care" link at the top of the page. If a drop-down menu appears when you move the mouse over "Customer Care" then just ignore it and click "Customer Care" at the top. Type "catalyst maintenance utilities" into the search box in the upper left part of the window and then click the "GO" button. Look in the search results for the "CATALYST - ATI Maintenance Utilities" link and then click it. Click the "cat-uninstaller.exe" link to download the utility. The only difference between this utility and the "ATI - Software Uninstall Utility" in "Add/Remove Programs" is that the downloaded version does not uninstall itself. Uninstalling NVIDIA drivers with Add/Remove ProgramsNVIDIA Add/Remove Programs NVIDIA driversIf you see an entry which says "NVIDIA Graphics Drivers" or "NVIDIA Display Drivers" then select it and remove it. But sometimes NVIDIA display drivers appear as "NVIDIA Drivers" as seen above. This version appears because NVIDIA makes more than just display adapters. They also make motherboard chipsets which means that there is more than one kind of NVIDIA driver which can be removed in "Add/Remove Programs". If you see something like "NVIDIA nForce Drivers", don't remove them. Those are motherboard chipset drivers. In the case shown above, just select "NVIDIA Drivers" and click the "Change/Remove" button.NVIDIA remove display driver verifyIf the only NVIDIA driver installed is a display driver, then it will ask you to verify if you want to remove your display driver.NVIDIA remove multiple driversIf there is more than one NVIDIA driver, then it will allow you to select which drivers to remove. Click "Remove only the following" and then make sure that only "NVIDIA Display Driver" has a check to the left of it. Click "Remove" and then it will uninstall your display driver and leave the rest of the NVIDIA drivers installed.If you have more than one NVIDIA display adapter installed in your computer, removing the display driver will remove the drivers for all display adapters which are using it. Cleaning the registryNext thing to do is to clean the registry of any unused key, use regscrubXP, it is pretty straight forward, start it, click on RegScrubXP finds problems, then let it go, it can take several minutes. Then when it is done, click on select all problems then on Fix Selected problems. Repeat the procedure, you never know, usually it finds some errors the second time around but, it is much faster.Now lets reboot.Once windows xp is back u and running you will have windows that will pop up saying that new device has been found. Cancel out of those windows, windows want to install generic drivers for our video card and monitor but, we don't want that. Next, run the driver setup that we downloaded earlier. let it go thru all the procedure, if it ask to reboot, do s
ne final thing to do, on our "The Witcher" DVD there is a folder called Directx, Nice, this is what we want to install !! Guess what, it is easy, find the file called setup and follow the instruction on screen. If you didnt update window correctly you may get some errors here (ex: error saying that the cryptographic service is not working).All done cool !! [size=10pt]Vista problems & Solution[/size]Thanx to Mopi on this oneYou cannot see the cursor on Vista ?Try heading into control panel > mouse > disable pointer precision. Thanx to ywfn on this oneIf your game is regularly crashing with 32-bit Vista, give this a try:From the Windows command line: BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2688Then you must reboot your computer.Then start Witcher and see if you crash anymore.I was crashing roughly every hour before, now I've been playing for hours without a single crash since making the change. I've only tested one night of play so far, so could be a coincidence. Would be interested to hear if it works/doesn't work for others.For those who want an explanation before blindly trying it:The Witcher executable is a 32-bit app compiled with "large address awareness", what this means is that the maximum amount of address space it can make use of is:On 64-bit Vista: 4GBOn 32-bit Vista: whatever IncreaseUserVa is set to (defaults to 2048MB)(Note: address space doesn't necessarily equate to real memory used, so I'm not saying that The Witcher actually makes use of >2GB RAM, I'm pretty sure it doesn't)I tried this because I read that people on 64-bit Vista weren't crashing, so it seemed like a possible reason.BTW, the valid values for IncreaseUserVa are 2048 to 3072, but I wouldn't suggest setting it much higher than the 2688 number I gave above, especially if you have a video card with a lot of memory on it, your Windows kernel may not end up with enough address space to operate properly. If you have problems you can always boot in safe mode and change it back to a lower value, or the normal 2048.Thanx to ChilliIBean on this oneI figured out a way!I have two Seagate SATA 3.0Gbps 80GB hard drives. I have Vista 32bit and the paging file on one drive. I completely removed the paging file from the same drive where Vista is installed and created the page file on my second hard drive. The intermittent crashes stopped and also the intermittent audio/video stuttering stopped!To change the pagefile location go to -> windows menu -> settings -> control panel -> system -> advanced system settings -> click "settings" button under Performance -> click on "Advanced" tab -> click on "Change" button -> click on drive you have Vista installed to highlight it then click on "no paging file" then click on your 2nd hard drive to highlight it then click on "System managed size" then click on "OK" button. It will ask you to reboot to remove the page file in the vista drive and create a system managed page file on the 2nd drive. I know you need two hard drives for this to work. Embarrassed [size=10pt]Tweaks[/size]Here is 2 tweaks that you can do to your system while playing the gameCpu affinity: If you have a cpu with more then one core, well while running The witcher, only one core is used to the max. Here is the deal.Start the game, alt tab out of it. go in task manager (ctrl-alt-del) -> Task Manager -> Find Witcher.exe and right click on it -> click on define affinity -> just click on OK in the new window. Close task manager and get back in the game.Defining priority: This is a good improvement speed for anyone that has a medium to low end computer. ***** Dont set it to realtime !!! *****Start the game, alt tab out of it. go in task manager (ctrl-alt-del) -> Task Manager -> Find Witcher.exe and right click on it -> go to Define priority -> Set it to high. Close task manager and get back in the game.If you have any kind of security program (firewall, anti-virus, defragmenter) that are running in the background (present in task manager) it would be a good idea to close them while playing.[size=10pt]Important links[/size]TAGES Website for driver updates to the copy protection system. Visual C++ SP1 x86 run time Visual C++ SP1 x64 run time