›

Poker Night 2 locks up computer on startup

GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
edited April 2013 in Poker Night - PC/Mac Support
As soon as I hit the button to launch Poker Night 2 in Steam, my screen goes completely black and my computer becomes completely unresponsive, including toggling Num Lock, and I have to force restart it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Comments

  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    Description: Realtek HD Audio output
    Date and Size: 7/16/2007 18:48:54, 4403712 bytes

    There's a chance that the problem is caused by the old Audio driver.
    You can try installing the latest Realtek HDA Driver.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    Two restarts later, nothing's changed but the driver.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    And the entire computer still crashes?

    Have you already tried unplugging all non essential USB devices?

    Running the game during a clean boot is also worth a try.

    Booting clean in Windows XP:
    1. Click Start --> Run --> Type msconfig --> Click OK
    2. On the General tab, choose Selective Startup
    3. Uncheck Process SYSTEM.INI file
    4. Uncheck Process WIN.INI file
    5. Uncheck Load Startup Items
    6. Click on the Services tab
    7. At the bottom, check Hide All Microsoft Services
    8. Click Disable All
    9. If running the game on Steam, re-check the "Steam Client Service"
    10. Click OK
    11. Click Restart
    12. After reboot, run the game to see if it works.

    After performing the necessary steps, restore your settings by doing the following:

    1. Click Start --> Run --> Type msconfig--> Click OK
    2. On the General tab, choose Normal Startup
    3. Click OK
    4. Click YES, when asked to restart your computer
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    Unplugged everything, did a clean boot, no change.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    That's a very unusual crash. Normally the game wouldn't crash the entire computer in case of an error.
    Does the computer run stable with other games or applications?


    I attached a zipped prefs.prop with low graphics settings. You can try if putting that into
    %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Telltale Games\Poker Night 2
    helps.

    You can also try running the games .exe as admin or in different compatibility modes.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    Yeah, I've never had an issue like this before. There's one other game that I think used to bluescreen me sometimes (the original Bioshock, maybe?) because it didn't like my graphics card, but most everything else runs stable for me. I've never had a game that just gives me a black screen and freezes the whole computer there.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    Yep, that did it. Instead of a black screen and a freeze, I got Poker Night 2 in a small window. I'll play with it a bit and see if I have any issues with going to fullscreen or something. Thanks for the help!
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    That's great. If pushing up the graphics settings crashes it again, we can assume that it's graphics card or graphics driver related.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    I bumped it to fullscreen with no problems, other than a bit of slowing. I bumped the rendering to high and it got quite a bit slower but stayed stable. I bumped it back to low and exited, and I was able to launch the game in fullscreen without a problem. The only setting I didn't try bumping up was anti-aliasing.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    GuruGuru214 wrote: »
    The only setting I didn't try bumping up was anti-aliasing.

    It would be interesting to see if that makes it crash again. Then we would know what caused the problem.
    You can always replace the prefs.prop afterwards.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    I'm going to be heading to bed pretty quickly here, so I'll give it a try when I'm ready to shut down anyway. If it causes a crash, I'll post an update from my phone.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    Awesome. Thanks :)
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    Tested it and then couldn't get the forums to load, so I went to bed.

    Well, I was able to crank the settings all the way up, exit, and get back into the game.

    d8AoT9x.jpg?1

    So just for kicks, I put the old prefs.prop file in, just to make sure I hadn't changed anything else. As expected, the computer crashed again. I don't know if anybody will be able to figure anything out from it, but I've attached the problem prefs.prop. It should be the original file installed by the game, but it's given me an awful lot of trouble for some reason.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    That's very weird.
    I tested your prefs.prop on my system, and the game started normally.
    I don't know what's happening there, but at least i have learned that some crashes can be fixed this way.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited April 2013
    The only thing I can figure that even might make sense is if maybe the audio settings are different. That'd still be weird, but it's the only idea I have for why my file might be at all different from the one where I cranked my settings up.

    In any case, a solution I don't exactly understand beats no solution any day.
  • Colossus02Colossus02
    edited April 2013
    DjNDB wrote: »
    That's a very unusual crash. Normally the game wouldn't crash the entire computer in case of an error.
    Does the computer run stable with other games or applications?


    I attached a zipped prefs.prop with low graphics settings. You can try if putting that into
    %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Telltale Games\Poker Night 2
    helps.

    You can also try running the games .exe as admin or in different compatibility modes.

    Thanks DjNDB! I was lurking and found that the prefs fix worked for me too!
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited April 2013
    Colossus02 wrote: »
    Thanks DjNDB! I was lurking and found that the prefs fix worked for me too!

    That's great. Would you share your dxdiag info, so we can try to figure out why it didn't work?

    Windows XP: Go to your start menu and click on run. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter
    Windows Vista / 7: Press the windows key on your keyboard or click on the start menu. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter.
    Windows 8: At the start screen, type in "dxdiag" and hit enter

    Now click on the button that says "save all information".
    It will prompt you to save a file. Save it where you can find it.

    Open the file and press Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C to copy the contents, and paste them in a reply by pressing CTRL-V.
    Sometimes the Forums spam filter catches long posts like this. Don't worry, we can still see them and make them visible.
  • tellmeastorytellmeastory
    edited July 2013
    Colossus02 wrote: »
    Thanks DjNDB! I was lurking and found that the prefs fix worked for me too!

    thks, i was so desperate that game didnt launch :mad:
This discussion has been closed.