Overview
Crashing to desktop every few minutes when playing Bioshock 2 on Win7 or later systems? If yes, this guide is for you.
A bad console port for PC
We PC gamers have long been plagued by bad console ports, while some of them run at poor framerate, others simply refuse to work on a variety of PC systems, for me Bioshock 2 is the latter, it runs at acceptable framerate but crashes like a trainwreck on my Win7 (x64 Ultimate) laptop, sometimes almost drove me mad, just look at those crash reports:
Fortunately, through all those crashes, I managed to tweak the game to reduce them to a acceptable rate.
However, I’ll be honest to tell you, even those tweaks won’t eliminate 100% of the CTDs, but neither will any other guides on Steam or Internet do, trust me.
Let’s see what we can do.
Launch options and compablity mode
If you’re playing this game on Win7, you may want to do following things:
1. Run the game in compability mode for Windows Vista SP2, as Administrator;
Run the game in windowed mode
The game has know issues in fullscreen mode, so make “windowed mode” under “graphic options” is on:
Tweak the .ini files
Like most Unreal Engine games, Bioshock 2 has a set of .ini files that is tweakable via simple text editing, some of those tweaks can help us reduce crash, but be cautious when altering these values, it can make this already poor console-port game even more unstable, so make a backup before any changes are done, you’ve been warned.
The config files we’re going to tweak are located at C:UsersYOURNAMEAppDataRoamingBioshock2Steam, since the AppData folder is hidden by default, you may want to unhide it to get access to those .ini files.
Tweak texture steaming:
In Bioshock2SP.ini, find TextureStreamingMemoryLimit and TextureStreamingDistanceLimit under [Engine.RenderConfig], and change TextureStreamingMemoryLimit to your graphic card’s VRAM (e.g. I have 2G VRAM so I use 2048), also change TextureStreamingDistanceLimit to 9000-10000:
Lower the mininum smoothed framerate value:
In Bioshock2SP.ini, find MinDesiredFrameRate under [WinDrv.WindowsClient], and change it to a lower value (e.g. 15-20), you might experience slightly lower overall fps, but the game will be more stable this way.
Enable vsync
Contrary to popular belief, the game actually crashes less when vsync is enabled, but the in-game vsync is very sluggish and low performance, so it’s better to disable vsync in game but enable it in your graphic driver.
In Bioshock2SP.ini, search for UseVSync and change the value to false, there are multiple entries under [BioDrv.BioRenderDevice] , [D3DDrv10.D3DRenderDevice10] and [ShockGame.ShockUserSettings], if you’re not sure, just change all of them to “UseVSync=False“.
Then enable vsync in your graphic card driver (e.g. Nvidia control panel):
Last but not the least: make sure your Bioshock2SP.ini is set to read-only after tweaking so the game won’t change it back.
Uninstall Windows update KB2670838
Strangely enough a Windows update can cause a game to crash, but according to many users this is just the case, the Windows platform update KB2670838 for Win7 is causing trouble for Bioshock 2 and a few other dx10 games, you may want to uninstall it:
Click start->control panel->uninstall a program->view installed updates, search for KB2670838 and uninstall it, restart you pc, done.
In case you may concern, the KB2670838 update is atcually a prerequisite update for IE10/11, since most gamers use Fireforx or Chrome, it’s not a big problem to uninstall IE10/11 along with this update, but if you do prefer IE10/11, you should keep this update and try other fixes.
Conclusion
Voilà, now you’ve eliminated 80-90% crashes of this game, I say that because I still have a few random CTDs even after applying all those tweaks, but they’re rare now and not too much game-breaking, just remember to save often by pressing the quicksave button, you’ll be mostly trouble-free on your journey in Rapture.
If anyone finds other useful fixes for Bioshck 2 crash please tell me ( I’ve read almost all the related guides on Steam and 2K forums though), I’ll add them to this guide when possible.
