Crash on Startup/Unable to Launch/Possible Fixes for Common Problems [WIP]

Overview

This guide regarding possible fixes for Bioshock Remastered is a “Work in progress” based on my own experience so far.

Can’t launch unless the STEAM is running.

After you installed the game and try to launch, it might be first error telling you that the game won’t launch until the STEAM is running, despite the fact that you started the game directly from STEAM; there’s a easy fix for that, just restart your STEAM and try again.

Now the game will try to run without error about STEAM, but you might get black or white screen with a crash prompt, if so read other solutions mentioned below.

Black or white screen with a crash prompt. [Windows 7]

There’s a high prodability based on the steam forums discussions that your Bioshock.exe will crash immediately on Windows 7 because of lack the Platform Update:

[link]

Download it and install, and finally try to launch your game one more time.

If you disable your Windows Update in services, you need to enable it, because it won’t install without Windows Update service running.

DXSETUP

You might also try heading to the game installation folder, then go to the :

“_CommonRedist” -> “DirectX” -> “Jun2010”

and scroll down to the “DXSETUP.exe” it will install all of the DirectX libraries that you might need.

RivaTuner/FRAPS/MSI Afterburner and other FPS counters

You may encounter white box on a black background and your game will freeze without launching up.

Disable or even uninstall (if you don’t need it) any FPS counter software if you have any like RivaTuner/Fraps/MSI Afterburner etc.

It might be possible to get the game to work without actually completely disabling RivaTuner if you don’t want… to do so

Just add Bioshock executable as an application profile in RivaTuner, and set the Application Detection Level to None

Black screen with sound

You may also encounter a situation when you will be able to hear sounds of your pointer in menu when it goes on “New Game”, “Options” etc. but you can’t see anything at all.

Close the game, go to the installation folder steamapps -> common -> BioShock Remastered then Build -> Final and open the Default.ini file, now look for the [WinDrv.WindowsClient] section and search for the line “StartupFullscreen=True” then change it to “StartupFullscreen=False”

The game will try to run in a window, and might fix your problem, after the game launch go to the options and change it to the fullscreen.

If you will Alt+Tab to the desktop during the game your game will go back to the windowed mode, so you will need to change it every time you will switch to desktop.

You might also try to open your Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del) right click on Bioshock game and use a “move it to the front” option from the menu.

Crash after using the camera on the first splicer

The issue may be resolved by two known possible fixes :

Go to your %appdata%/BioshockHD/Bioshock and backup your Bioshock.ini file (for example on a desktop) then delete the current one from the Bioshock folder – it may fix your problem for a while.

This is known issue especially for a Nvidia GeForce users and it’s know issue even from a non-remastered edition of Bioshock

This is caused in a games that using Directx10 and Directx11 so you might try to force your game to Directx9, to do so, run your game with a -dx9 startup paramater :

Right-click on the game title under the Library in Steam and select Properties.
Under the General tab click the Set launch options… button.
Enter the launch option -dx9 and click OK.
Then close the game’s Properties window and launch the game.

also… this problem should not occur when you’ll try to research any of already dead splicers bodies

I’m strongly recommend to try different drivers to your GPU (newest one is not always the best) and totally close the GPU control programs while playing independently if you’re GeForce or AMD user like AMD Catalyst Control, NVIDIA Control Panel and GeForce Experience.

OpenAL

There was a few cases, where reinstalling OpenAL[community.pcgamingwiki.com] actually fixed crash on startup and audio stutters.

Possible crashes while using extra mouse buttons

If your game will crash after using your extra mouse buttons (Mouse 4, Mouse 5, MMB) you should bound it to another keys or avoid using it… but it’s recommended to reset controls to default, or change controls that were bound to extra mouse buttons.