Burnout Paradise: constant crashing on Vista & Windows 7
I know this has little to do with gaming, but more to do with lack of gaming. On both my Vista PC as my Windows 7 laptop, Burnout Paradise crashes 9 times out of 10 just a few frames after going in-game.
The odd thing is that it happens on both machines (PC has a nVidia 8600 GTS, laptop has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650). The game was downloaded via Steam on each machine separately. Disabling anti-virus (MS Security Essentials) or, via Steam, defragmenting, verifying and redownloading has no effect.
At first, I only ran the game on my laptop. Correspondence with EA promised a patch for Windows 7 after several e-mails, but it regularly crashes on my PC as well.
A list of about 15 other Steam games run without hitches on either machine. Has anybody run into such an issue with Burnout Paradise?
Solution 1:
I had this issue on Burnout Paradise on Win7 64 installed via Steam with an ATI(AMD) 4850 with latest drivers. It worked fine when I first installed it and then, when I came back to it after a long period, crashed immediately on start-up. After a bit of research I saw people had similar problems caused by incompatible web-cam drivers. As I'd just installed a web-cam I uninstalled the web-cam drivers, rebooted, re-verified the game and it has worked fine since.
I can't say whether this would help you, but if you have a web-cam try uninstalling it and seeing if this helps.
Solution 2:
I haven't experienced any problems on my Vista machine since updating Games for Windows Live. It could be coincidence, but I thought I'd leave this behind nonetheless.
Edit: I have noticed that the problem definitively disappeared after removing Internet Explorer 9 from my Vista machine, following problems with GTA IV. I'm fairly sure this was the cause of the problems, as both games use an in-game browser.
At the time of posting this question, I believe I had the first beta of IE 9 installed, but the problems are still there when using the released version. Only by uninstalling and rebooting have I found both games to work again.
Solution 3:
Burnout Paradise is known for having several bugs in newer systems. I'm still struggling with making it to work for myself in my laptop, and after digging a while in the internet, the best answer so far gathering the possible solutions is described in this Steam Topic.
However, I believe the way it's structured is addressing by solutions, but not by steps of failure (which is what I'll try to do here). So here it goes:
Normal steps running the game
- Launch game
- Appears the 'Click any Button'
- Game asks for EA Network login - First Bug
- You start a new game
- Narrative that appears the first time you run appears
- During narrative, 'DMV' appears - Second Bug
- You pick your car / bike
- You start playing
- Game crashes always in less than 1 min - Third Bug
- Game crashes randomly, in 1 min or in 30 min - Forth Bug
First Bug - EA Network login issues
Once you enter your EA network login details, a screen behind the game window appears, which a 'back to game' blank button on the lower right corner. For some people, after clicking this button game crashes.
Solution 1: Enter in contact with EA support and ask them to fix your accounting.
Solution 2: Do not log into the EA Network. Obviously, you won't be able to use multiplayer functionalities and store. If you have already logged in and don't know how to 'cancel' your subscription, you can delete the folder %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Criterion Games\Burnout Paradise
Second Bug - DMV license crash
Here, Burnout Paradise tries to take a picture of the gamer to add into the License. It's funny, but buggy.
Solution: For these crashes, follows the suggestion on disabling webcams (described above). Also, shown in YouTube.
Third Bug - Game crashes after a few moments
The most likely root cause here is incompatibilities of an old game running in newer systems.
Solution 1: The most logic solution that applies to most gamers is using the Multi Core CPU fix, which is adding the -multithread option on the game launching options.
Solution 2: Run in Compatibility mode. Some say XP sp3, others say Vista, others Win8. Pick yours.
Solution 3: Repair your game. That's what worked (I believe) for me.
Forth Bug - Game crashes randomly
This is caused by the buggy Soundtrack.
Solution: Follows steps described in EA Burnout Paradise Support, which is disabling soundtrack #25.
Hope this helps people to understand that there are different bugs at different stages of the game, so when reporting it, would be good to explicitly mention when the crash happens.