Unable to start the game

[Zjolnir]

I bought Victoria 3 on January 8, 2025 on Steam.
But I can't play it, the game crashes on startup.

Please help

I also installed Stellaris and it works fine.

 

[AndrewT]

Right click on victoria3.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.





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/Victoria3/pdx_settings.json .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/crashes/ folder, attach here the latest (only!) exceptions.txt

 

[Zjolnir]

First steps don't help.

Here is my dxdiag.txt

 

[Zjolnir]

I also installed Crusader Kings 3 and it works fine.

 

[AndrewT]

I also installed Crusader Kings 3 and it works fine.

We do see some crashes in ck3.exe in that dxdiag ... ?

But I don't see what is preventing this game from starting. If you run victoria3.exe directly from file explorer, do you see any error when it fails?

If you run a Steam Verify Operation against the game, does it find anything to fix?

 

[Zjolnir]

We do see some crashes in ck3.exe in that dxdiag ... ?

Are you seriously questioning what one of your clients says?
No.
I've never had any one crash with Crusader Kings 3.
The only thing is that it takes a long time to start.
But at the end it works without any crash.

But I don't see what is preventing this game from starting.

If you don't find no one wil.

If you run victoria3.exe directly from file explorer, do you see any error when it fails?

I ignored that it was possible to start the game without starting it through steam.
I tried agter that question "If you run victoria3.exe directly from file explorer"
But It crashed again in the same way as previously.
Initializing... then crash

I have now 9 Victoria 3 crash.
Here come the files from the last one.

If you run a Steam Verify Operation against the game, does it find anything to fix?
I've already tried that. But just because you ask me I have done it again.
but nothing wrong with the files.

Any other idea ?

 

[AndrewT]

We do see some crashes in ck3.exe in that dxdiag ... ?

Are you seriously questioning what one of your clients says?
No.
I've never had any one crash with Crusader Kings 3.
The only thing is that it takes a long time to start.
But at the end it works without any crash.

See for yourself!

Windows Error Reporting:
+++ WER0 +++:
Détecteur d'erreurs 1856581243625661862, type 4
Nom d’événement : APPCRASH
Réponse : Non disponible
ID de CAB : 0

Signature du problème :
P1 : ck3.exe
P2 : 1.0.0.0
P3 : 67486e81
P4 : ntdll.dll
P5 : 10.0.19041.5007
P6 : 688f8c4b
P7 : c0000005

If you haven't noticed them, okay then, but they definitely happened! Maybe as you were exiting the game?


I don't see any clear cause of this in those new files either. Your CPU and GPU are okay for the game, you are not on the problem version of Win11.

If you make a new Windows user on this machine and try the game under that, is it any different?

Are there any crash dump files under Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/ ?


There is a mini-dump attached here - @PDX_Sosanna does that tell you anything about what caused this?

 

[PDX_Sosanna]

Are you seriously questioning what one of your clients says?
No.

Manners please.

@AndrewT The minidump is interesting. I reached out to one of our programmers as I've never seen a similar CTD before and he says that in this case the game cannot find some hardcoded modifier definitions that the code is looking for, which is likely caused by corrupted or modified installation.
I'd recommend performing a full reinstallation (including deletion of the Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 3 folder) and if that does not help, seeking a refund on Steam as there is nothing we can do with it on our side.

 

[AndrewT]

@Zjolnir
Please do a full clean re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-Vic3
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Victoria3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3 folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add Victoria3.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Victoria3 or Documents Victoria3 locations, before installing again.

Good luck!