Crash on Startup – GUI FindChild('interest_group_top') returns nullptr (Patch 1.9.5)

[CurtisChen]

Integrity​

I have verified my game files (on Steam)​

Yes

I have disabled all mods​

Yes

Required​

Summary​

Crash on Startup – GUI FindChild('interest_group_top') returns nullptr (Patch 1.9.5)

Description​

Game crashes immediately after launch with repeated error in error.log:

Promote 'FindChild' returned nullptr, in 'PdxGuiWidget.FindChild('interest_group_top').TriggerAnimation('show')'

Steps to reproduce​

Steps Tried:

Clean reinstall from Steam

Full deletion of:

Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria 3

Workshop content folders

AppData launcher folders

Disabled overlays (Steam, Discord, NVIDIA)

Tried -culture=en -dx11 -skipLauncher -noWorkshop -windowed launch flags

Set locale to English (US), disabled Steam Cloud

No mods, no custom saves

System: Windows 11 (Build 26100) Intel Core i7-14700K NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti 32 GB RAM Game version: 1.9.5 Language: zh (system), tested also in English Game crashes before menu screen Temporary Fix: Rolling back to version 1.9.4 allows the game to launch normally. Attached logs: error.log game.log pdx_settings.txt (if needed)

Game Version​

1.9.5

OS​

Windows

Additional​

Bug Type​

Crash to Desktop

Save Game​

Attachments​

 

[PDX_Sosanna]

The error.log don't contain any information tied to the crashes. To be able to see what happened we would need the folder from Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 3/crashes as well as the DxDiag log file.
Moving to Tech Support.