@Jugginator I PM'd this. But as a follow up for anyone else that may experience this issue. Beside a system restart, I have found and successfully tested numerous time during the last 18 hours, that if I use the my Steam Library "Play" button the game fires up consistently every time. Now, this is a "workaround" in my opinion, but it keeps me from rebooting. There is probably something whack in the registry, jug suggested I delete any fun pimps entries in the registry....but I wont do that just yet. Got other irons in the fire, and for now I am content with going through the library. In a couple of weeks I will have more time to screw around with registry.
Or there is something wrong with my game launcher, by the way, the desktop shorcut created by steam doesnt work either, it suffers from the same ailment. What I dont know what is so different about those two vs the Steam library launch.
Just an update. I had been playing all fat dum and happy since the last post using the steam "Play" button or choosing the game from the steam app in system tray. Then Steam updated yesterday and BAM! proceeded to lock up during loading block textures. Weird fecal matter if you ask me heh.
Anyways, I forced a game verification and launched fine afterwards.
Sorry for the necro, but this issue continued on and off. I had to take some time off game and came back to A21. I took the oppurtunity to remove the game, clean the registry from any fun pimp stuff. Did a clean download and install from steam, and BAM! Back to square one. Frustrated and not wanting to reboot every time and went searching around the interwebz and came accross this site:
Now, I didnt do all of that, but concentrated on the temporary files section and by doing this:
Press Windows + ‘I’ to open Settings.
Navigate to System>Storage.Select Temporary files.
[*]Click on Remove files.
I can play every time without any issues. Thinking being graphics related, I tried a couple of times just deleting DX Shader Cache, but it still happened.
So, I dont know what the game stores in the other places, but either it cant find it or my system wont let it find it and it locks up.
Going to be brutally honest here, you may be chasing the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. When you get the Microsoft basic driver automatically installed instead of an nvidia/amd/intel driver like this, it's because either the driver was corrupted or the driver failed to communicate correctly, the latter of which usually (I would say always because it's always the case, but never say never is something I believe in) is either a failed part in the GPU or system incompatibility (e.g. a system built for, say, windows XP or 7 and that hardware configuration just doesn't work with windows 10/11, I have seen this at least once with someone, their GPU could only get drivers working correctly on windows 7).
I'm sure that site said it, but "ram cache" is wiped out with a system restart, so nothing special there. There won't be anything in the temporary files that would do this. The only (at least to my knowledge) thing that would be causing this would be something badly corrupted in the OS system, which you could go down the route of using DISM to clean it up, but sometimes just cutting it short and going the nuclear route of just reinstalling the OS (or using the "Refresh" option) is the route to go to save time troubleshooting (did DISM miss corruption? is DISM corrupted too so it won't find corruption? etc). If you still can't get a driver installed, then you've isolated it to the GPU or motherboard (I only added motherboard because I never say never, but that's one unlikely case). I would try a known good GPU first, though, that's a very quick test. Even something dirt cheap like a 20$-30$ card as long as it's known to work is a good tester. Even cheaper. If it outputs video and is able to install and keep a manufacturer driver -- you know it means it's your other GPU.
Sorry for the necro, but this issue continued on and off. I had to take some time off game and came back to A21. I took the oppurtunity to remove the game, clean the registry from any fun pimp stuff. Did a clean download and install from steam, and BAM! Back to square one. Frustrated and not wanting to reboot every time and went searching around the interwebz and came accross this site:
Now, I didnt do all of that, but concentrated on the temporary files section and by doing this:
Press Windows + ‘I’ to open Settings.
Navigate to System>Storage.Select Temporary files.
[*]Click on Remove files.
I can play every time without any issues. Thinking being graphics related, I tried a couple of times just deleting DX Shader Cache, but it still happened.
So, I dont know what the game stores in the other places, but either it cant find it or my system wont let it find it and it locks up.
I just read through this thread because it was bumped and my gut (and thirty years of experience in the field) are screaming hardware or driver issue. If it was my system, I would backup my documents/pictures/saves/etc, boot a Linux USB, zero each sector on the disk (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd<x> bs=<512 or 4096>, then pop in a Windows 10 or 11 USB and install fresh.
The way I install ANY Windows OS these days is to disconnect from the Internet (unplug your LAN cable and don't connect to WiFi during install), download the latest drivers for the hardware using a live USB or download them before wiping and place them onto a USB, copy the drivers to "C:\Drivers" after install, then install said drivers BEFORE going online. This prevents Windows Update from pulling bad drivers down, which it WILL do. This also allows you to configure Windows Update and other things BEFORE going online and having to fight all of the "automagic" stuff.
Beelzy, that is common in the Unix/Linux/BSD world. Not so much on Windows. I will say that I have a home-made version of 10 64bit that runs from a flash-drive and contains all of my tools. I couldn't do my job without it. No, it isn't for download since the software is licensed to me, but it's an amazing tool to make if you build your own!
It is also common on high-security Windows Server boxes, or workstations in a high-security environment. Gaming rigs, not so much. I used to manage a server-farm that had 2022 on USB3.2 drives on a special port on the motherboard (USB 3.2 port) and the RAID disks in the servers was solely for data.
, then pop in a Windows 10 or 11 USB and install fresh.
