PhysX: An Ideally Definitive Guide.

If you are like me, you have encountered an infuriating "PhysX was not installed correctly." crash on starting up Homefront that seemed impossible to overcome. Worse yet, you may not have found a conclusive solution to this problem whilst trawling the Discussions, as I had once done.

This guide aims to do both, in providing a complete repository of fixes for this issue and definitively resolving it for the time being.

Let us begin.

This fix took a bit of self-discovery to find, but should be the main solution to the crash itself.

To repair the existing PhysX installation, one must do the following:

• Go to the Windows Control Panel. (Windows System folder in Windows 10's Start Menu, or otherwise search for it.)
  
• Click on Programs and Features, or Add or Remove Programs depending on naming.
  
• Scroll down to NVIDIA PhysX. Click on it once.
  
• Click the Repair prompt in Control Panel.
  
• In the PhysX Installation Tool, click on the Repair option when prompted to.

Homefront should now start up correctly.

Leave the Control Panel open, however, or go back to it if it was closed, for the next step involves updating PhysX.

To make sure you are running the latest version of NVIDIA PhysX, you must update it through the following steps:

• Go to the official NVIDIA PhysX website, found here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/physx-system-software/
  
• Click on PhysX System Software.
  
• Cross-reference the version number shown there with the version number of your existing PhysX software in the Control Panel. If the numbers do not match, you must update it via clicking on the Download Now element. Optionally, read the release notes before downloading to learn what this version release affects.
  
• Go to the PhysX System Software application in Downloads, and click on it.
  
• Follow the installation prompts.
  
• Repeat this process with the Legacy Driver version, found here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/physx/physx-9-13-0604-legacy-driver/

You should now have the latest stable release of NVIDIA PhysX System Software, and see a minor performance increase on the main menu screen, or if you disabled the smoothed FPS cap in the config files.

This guide should not only work for Homefront, but also affect any other game that uses PhysX and may have issues caused by the PhysX System Software installation.

Until another time.

—TS2.