Overview
The purpose of this guide is to inform you of how to avoid crashes and easily work around any that you encounter.
Introduction
If you’re like me, you realize that this game is flawed (i.e. weird controls, low budget) but those things don’t detract from it’s enjoyment because of the excellent story, quirky dialog, and incredible atmosphere. What does take away from it’s enjoyment though is when it won’t start at all (duh) or crashes often. The poor port is to blame, but I want to share a few tips with you that have allowed me to make it through the game as interruption-free as possible. These are the steps I took which ultimately made it start (important!) and more stable during gameplay.
Essential Mods
Before you launch the game for the first time, I highly recommend that you install and configure two essential mods, which are DPfix and SweetFX.
DPfix will give you many graphical setting options not present in the stock game, most importantly enabling you to run the game at higher resolutions. It will also play an important role in avoiding and playing through crashes, which I explain in detail in the sections below.
SweetFX will color correct the otherwise bland color pallet that this port is known for.
For instructions on how to install these mods and configure them to “play well” together, please refer to this excellent Deadly Premonition resource:
http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deadly_Premonition:_The_Director%27s_Cut#Essential_improvements
Getting Past The Intro Movie Crash
I found this crash unique in the fact that performing the tweaks mentioned in the rest of this guide will not help resolve. Perhaps that is merely due to the fact that this is the first crash, a very common one at that.
After the intro movie scene plays out you’ll most likely encounter a crash with the error message “dp.exe has stopped working”, preventing you from ever making it to the main menu. I tried several commonly suggested fixes like reinstalling PhysX and running the game in Compatibilty Mode, but to no avail. What ultimately fixed that for me was uninstalling LAV Filters via the Control Panel. I didn’t realize they were ever installed to begin with and I haven’t lost any functionality since I uninstalled them.
If the LAV Filter uninstall doesn’t solve the problem, try going one step further and uninstalling 3rd-party video players like VLC and then setting Windows Media Player as the default video player. Once you get past the crash, you can reinstall the 3rd-party players.
Borderless Windowed Mode
The root cause of the crashes seem to be due to DP.exe encountering an access violation with obtaining rights to run in Exclusive Fullscreen Mode. I came to that conclusion for three reasons:
– If you Google the Exception Code (0xc0000005) which is logged in Event Viewer after DP.exe crashes, you will see that it is refered to as an “Access Violation”.
– The crashes always occur when entering or exiting a cut-scene, indicating the access violation may be related to what screen mode the game is running in.
– What I mention later in the guide about running in True Windowed Mode and how it’s the best method in working through crashes.
It’s for those reasons that I suggest configuring the game to run in “Borderless Windowed Mode” in an effort to try and avoid the alleged access violation when running in Exclusive Fullscreen. You can easily configure this if you installed DPfix by editing the DPfix.ini file. To do so simply do the following:
1. Navigate to the “Deadly Premonition The Director’s Cut” directory.
2. Open DPfix.ini in Notepad and in the “Window Options” section, change “borderlessFullscreen 0” to “borderlessFullscreen 1”. Save and then close Notepad. It should look like this:
The final step to run in Borderless Windowed Mode is you have to uncheck the “Full Screen Mode” option in the settings menu of the Launcher (see below).
Processor Affinity Tweak
The first time I experienced a crash-free session in Deadly Premonition that lasted 5+ hours was immediately after I experimented with the Affinity settings via Windows Task Manager. The game’s minimum requirements call for a dual-core processor, so perhaps mimicing said processor is the reason this strategy seems to improve stability.
To change the Affinity settings, start the Launcher but do not select “Play”. WIth the Launcher running, open Task Manager and perform the following steps:
1. Locate DPLauncher.exe, right click and selecy the option to “Set affinity”.
2. Mimic dual-core processor mode by selecting only cores 0-3.
3. Click OK and then close Task Manager.
The bad news is that you will need to do this each time you start the Launcher, but the good news is it only takes a few seconds. The Affinity settings you just applied to DPLauncher.exe are passed along to DP.exe when you click “Play”, in case you were wondering.
Compatibility Mode – Prevent Freezes
Configuring DP.exe to run in Windows XP SP3 Compatibility Mode is a commonly suggested way to run the game, with the logic being that it runs more stably overall and a good strategy to get past crashes. It helps prevent the game from freezing (not necessarily crashing), but I found that when I ran the game in any kind of Compatibility Mode for any length of time that the framerate would consistently drop to the point of being unplayable (dropping to the teens). Taking it out of Compatibilty Mode and running it normally (I run Windows 10) I got a steady 60 FPS for hours on end.
Windows XP SP3 mode is the only way I found to get past a freeze (the freeze just before leaving the Hospital, for example). For crashes, particularly those triggered by cutscenes, I came to find “Windowed Mode” to be a better and more efficient way of getting past them, which I will cover in the next section.
Getting Through Cut-scene Crashes
In the event that you still experience a crash, you will most likely notice it to occur going into or out of a cut-scene and that it will throw the error “dp.exe has stopped working”. Running the game in “True Windowed Mode” is the fastest way around that. Post-crash, simply launch the game in windowed mode, make it past the crash point, save at the soonest possible opportunity, then relaunch in “Borderless Windowed Mode”.
Remember though that we configured “Borderless Windowed Mode” in DPfix.ini, so use it to go back and forth between modes. You can configure DPfix.ini to do this by folllowing these steps:
1. Open DPfix.ini in Notepad and go to the “Window Options” section.
2. Change “forceWindowed 0” to be “forceWindowed 1”
3. Change “borderlessFullscreen 1” to be “borderlessFullscreen 0”.
4. The changes should look like the screenshot below. Save the changes and exit Notepad.
Conclusion
I hope this guide helps you experience Deadly Premonition in the best, most interruption-free way possible. It truly is a shame that such an excellent and underrated game was left in this state, regardless of the reasons why.
The information in this guide is what helped me the most, however I know your issues may be different for a number of reasons. The pinned post in the Steam forum was informative but ultimately not very helpful for me. For additional information and potentianl fixes I highly recommend that you visit the site linked below.
For resolving in-game issues that are not related to crashes please see my “Fix Non-Crash Related Problems In Deadly Premonition” guide.
[link]