Crash during startup with steam using dlc

[Suresha]

Yesterday (sunday) I bought the expansion subscription for stellaris in steam, installed the game and it worked with no issues. I created some empires but did not start a game. I turned the pc off for the night.

This morning the game crashes during the initial loading screen when using dlc. The game loads to 5%, then jumps to 30% and sometimes climbs to 31 or 32 but then crashes.

I have no mods. The game loads fine with no dlc. Sometimes some dlc do load fine, but after some time trying to find some consistency there I found none. Some dlc never loaded. Others worked when loaded alone and/or in combinations with some other dlcs sometimes, but other times did not load even alone. I owned some dlc before using the subscription. These seemed to have no consistency regarding which mods loaded and in what combinations. I have not touched the game in years, but don't remember having any problems before.

I have tried reinstalling the game on steam clean and not, restarting steam, even reinstalling steam. I tried using the new beta patch, setting to borderless windowed, and some other possible fixes I found. Stellaris is exempted in my antivirus.

While writing this I decided to next try install the Paradox launcher (account is linked to steam). First I tried to get the launcher to recognize my exisiting steam install of Stellaris, but it did not work. So I uninstalled the steam version and installed Stellaris using the Paradox launcher. The launcher only installed version 3.4.5 (a361), and did not work with the expansion subscription from steam: it did install some dlc that I only have access to with the subscription but cannot verify their ownership, while most of the subscription-based dlcs it did not install.

Yet, the game did load without crashing with the dlc the launcher installed when used via the Paradox launcher. Some of those dlc were ones that crashed every attempt on steam yet today.

After this, I moved the all files from the folder installed to with Paradox launcher (including paradox launcher-specific dlc) to steamapps/common/Stellaris and reinstalled stellaris with steam into that same folder. After that install, the game loaded in steam with all steam dlc active, and not only once but multiple times with steam restarts in-between.

Included DxDiag file.

While I did find a solution for this problem, maybe someone can find some true meaning to these occurrences.

 

[Suresha]

Update: It seems to be up to luck whether Stellaris launches every time I try. Sometimes it crashes at 30% then I simply try to launch it again right after and it succeeds. At least I'm having more luck now than last morning.

Also, I've hit another issue. When playing, every day I get an empty event:

I thought maybe it had to do with the paradox-launcher only dlc I had hanging around my install, but disabling them in launcher and removing from files did not remove the issue. Still, could be due to loading the game on top of install by the Paradox launcher, but with a clean install I'll be back to Stellaris not launching at all.

 

[AndrewT]

While writing this I decided to next try install the Paradox launcher (account is linked to steam). First I tried to get the launcher to recognize my exisiting steam install of Stellaris, but it did not work. So I uninstalled the steam version and installed Stellaris using the Paradox launcher. The launcher only installed version 3.4.5 (a361), and did not work with the expansion subscription from steam: it did install some dlc that I only have access to with the subscription but cannot verify their ownership, while most of the subscription-based dlcs it did not install.

This is because the game is no longer supported on that platform, only via Steam or MS/Gamepass. You can uninstall that old version.

Manually copying files is absolutely not necessary to get the game working! And as you've seen likely causes problems all of its own.


Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere, and user empire designs.txt from /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ if you have made any custom empires or races.
- "uninstall" in Steam-Stellaris
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Stellaris AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folders - In particular you need to make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Stellaris or Documents Stellaris locations, before installing again.
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add stellaris.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.

THEN Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60

THEn test with a new unmodded galaxy.

If those don't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here. IF dxdiag.txt fails to attach here, rename it to dxdiag.log , or zip it up.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/pdx_settings.txt and settings.txt.
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log , exceptions.log

 

[Suresha]

This did work, of which I am not totally surprised, though it was essentially the same that I started with yesterday. The exception being manually setting the firewall and ransomware exceptions before first launch of the game, and being logged in in the paradox launcher. The exception rules were created automatically for the game when launched before though.

The game did work after being installed on Sunday after all, and only broke the next day. So I decided to try mimic those conditions and turned my device off/on. After that, the first launch crashed at 30%, but a few subsequent all succeeded.

I cannot remember seeing anything about the game not being fully supported on the paradox launcher when installing it with that. Could do with a warning or something unless I am blind.

 

[AndrewT]

cannot remember seeing anything about the game not being fully supported on the paradox launcher when installing it with that. Could do with a warning or something unless I am blind.

I can only agree, but I've been unsuccessful in getting that done, I'm sorry.