I am sorry to post about a game fix here but I was horrified after spending a lot of money on a game only to know that its doesnt work properly on Vista.
Witcher is an impressive RPG that made waves at E3. It is the next big game after Diablo2 which I enjoyed a lot. Witchers are essentially the mutated Ghostbusters, a band of sterile humans with supernatural abilities and enhanced fighting skills based on a series of novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
How to Fix Vista 32-bit Crashes
Open the Command prompt as Administrator in Vista
(Start > All Programs > Accessories > right click Command Prompt > Choose run as Administrator)
Enter BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2800
Restart the computer and start Witcher
Detailed Explanation of the above
On a 32-bit system the maximum amount of address space is set by the value of “IncreaseUserVa”. Now the default value of IncreaseUserVa is set to 2048MB. The allowed values for IncreaseUserVa are 2048-3072MB. By increasing the amount of address space available for Witcher, we can prevent it from crashing. Personally I am able to play without crashes for a few hours after doing the above steps.
I recommend that you set the value back to 2048MB after you are done playing the game.
In addition to the above steps make sure you have KB940105 update from Microsoft installed.
Please leave a comment here if this fix worked for you.
You can also buy me a beer :D
Thanks this helped a lot. :grin: Freaking Vista. lol
Yep, thanks. It seems to have solved the problem, but I’ve only had a couple of 3 hour spurts since trying it. So far so good!
Glad I could help. Wish U a Merry Xmas.
K the witcher works great now, but I can’t reset it back to BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2048
it keeps saying “the boot configuration data store could not be opened. access is denied.”
If I don’t return it back to 2048 is this gonna hurt my computer?
No all it did was allow a single program to access upto this amount of memory. To be able to reset you still must run Command Prompt as in adminstrator. Follow the above steps just using 2048 instead of 2800, and it should work. Make sure you are under “C:/Windows/System32>”
I did as instructed and was able to play for 5 minutes before the screen went black…game still ran…couldn’t use task manager to exit the program had to do manual reset…
Intel en2160 @ 3.015Ghz
2GB Corsair
Nvidia 8800GTS in SLI running forceware 169.25drivers
Win Vista 32bit
Doesn’t seem to work for me either. After trying this it crashes after a few minutes. Usually, after I talk to the Reverend.
@ Neil >> Make sure you are running the command as a computer administrator.
@ rafiki6 >> Thanks for helping out.
@Mr.Shirt >> Make sure you are running the command as a computer administrator. I think you just entered the command without running it as an admin. Therefore the command does not execute.
@ odius >> Reverend problem = Get the new patch.
I don’t know how to run it as the admin, I’m not familiar with DOS at all. My Vista only has one profile/user.
Also when it was set to 2800 I noticed other games like crysis were not performing as well all of a sudden. Does that make sense? sorry for swamping your message board. thx.
I have the latest patch and it would still crash each time I’ve talked to the Reverend. I restarted the game and even in the prologue it is now crashing every few minutes. I’ve lowered the resolution and the detail settings and it still crashes. Vista is up to date as far as patches are concerned and I have the most recent video drivers for my card. I’ve also tried your fix and several other I’ve found on the net. My only remaining option is to try it on XP and hope it works otherwise I’ll have to wait until someone gets their act together and fixes the game.
Witcher was running great on my Vista Home Premium (32bit) until I took a break from it because of work. Few days ago I downloaded 1.2 patch, applyed it, and wanted to continue adventuring (end of 1st chapter… had no crashes before break).
But suddenly game was crashing every 10 mins. Opening journal (text was missing from entries) or plundering dead enemy would often cause crash. I tried fix presented here and it wouldn’t work.
Today I’ve had luck – on Witcher forums (http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=7f4npsiou0cuoqkvje3tf7d733&topic=4565.msg190279#msg190279) I’ve found entry that suggests to reinstall drivers, and I remembered that during break I installed newest NVidia drivers. I uninstalled them, restarted computer and Vista offered to install 7600 GO drivers because they were missing. I accepted, waited for installation to finish, started Witcher… and not a single crash since then!
So I suggest you try drivers Vista automatically installs or the ones specified in forum thread. I’m playing with Medium settings (Anti-aliasing off) in 1280×768 resolution && left that BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2800 in settings.
Good luck!
My game STOPS right at the cut scene when you drop your sword at the sgts feet trying to pass into Vizimu
I hear sound and all but cant save or move, just a black screen.
Hey Barackuse, your problem is that you copied your Save Games from the demo into the full version. Ha i did that too, same exact problem I had, just start from scratch you won’t regret it, you missed a lot of content! have fun
Hi!
I’m having the same problem: my game crashes every time I try to talk to the Reverend. I used the “IncreaseUserVa” and now it does not crash (not always) but the journal, the inventory, etc… become illegible!!!
Any suggestion? :cry:
As much as I would love to help you guys out, I am busy with my studies and still havent played the game since chapter 1.
Maybe you guys could share answers here or check out thewithcer.com
There forums there could contain information that could be useful
Played for hours and then the game crashed to desktop, went looking for a patch and installed the 1.2 patch. After that every time I tried to buy anything from Abigail the game would crash, and there is stuff you HAVE to buy from her. Looked into the event log and it mentioned something about the window manager not being able to work because an application (witcher) had disabled it. So I ran witcher in window mode instead and have had no problems since (cross fingers cross toes). There is a program called Gamers Window Relocator which takes away the window borders and fits it to screen. Except for no anti aliasing you can’t tell the difference from full screen.
Mate I did what you asked and it kinda worked, Witcher takes a lot longer to crash.
But now I can’t play Crysis anymore, everytime I load a game I get a black screen and have to ctrl+alt+del to exit it.
I’ve tried to set it back to 2048 but the problem still happens.
Any tips for me?
On my laptop the IncreaseUserVa is still 2800.
I am able to play both Withcer and Crysis with no problems. So dont know why you are facing this black screen on Crysis :(
This worked wonders for me, until I tried to get the ring from the rev. I open up inventory and game crashes, I do it in windows mode, the screen will freeze, but I can still tap around the buttons and hear it.
‘In addition to the above steps make sure you have KB940105 update from Microsoft installed.’
When I try to do this, it says ‘This update does not apply to your system’.
But I selected the Vista 32 option, and that is what I have.
i tried but still nothing happened i have 256 mb vga and 1gn ram
how do i restore value back to 2048MB?
Hey man! This appears to have helped tremendously! I was crashing ever 10 min’s and now so far no crashes. I’ll keep you up to date. YOU ROCK! :)
Sorry didn’t work. Wouldv’e written more, but there was an error when posting and when I used the BACK button this form RESET itself. BAD BAD BAD web practice that should really be punished.
How do you change it back, simply type the same thing you did to change it in the first place but type different numbers.
thanx alot fer this nfo..
I followed every step and it worked very nice :)…
I shall say though that i had allready installed the newest patch, cant reckon the version.
B4 i had crashes all the time…
After following yer steps no probs.. I Played fer about 6-7 hours, the first 2 chapters without a crash.. Only time it was a bit shitty was in the trade quarters. Had some crashes there.. But other than that no probs..
SO Thanx alot fer sharing this awesome nfo.. Really appreciated..
Cheers
Justed wanted to say i am Using Vistax86 Ultimate with all updates installed
XFX GeForce 8600GT 256
2 gig RAM
AMD DualCore 6000+
why it is recommended to set the value back to 2048 :?:
i get the problem “bcedit is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”
any help?
lily that’s because u gotta type BCDEDIT not bcedit :P and make sure u run it in administrator :wink:
Hey Ste, I have been typing BCEDIT and running it in admin and, but i still get the same problem, any other advice??
:sad:
hopefully i can get this game soon!
I mean get this game running soon!
lily u gotta type BC DEDIT not BCEDIT theres a D infront of the E
ah! why did i keep reading that as edit???? my brain does this sometimes, i cant really help it :lol:
well it works now, thanks alot ste!
lol np ^^
WOW GREAT!!!!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
It really works, no more crashes here : )
wow u guys have been helping each other. been some time since i was able to access the blog….
If any of your know any resolutions to other problems let us know the solution here
Yay! Thanks so much for taking the time to post this fix. I just bought the game and was loving it until it started crashing every 10 minutes. Since I did your fix it hasn’t crashed once. Thank you!
Is there any REAL reason to go back 2080mb? Everything seems to be working fine so thanks.
Two things:
Setting this on systems that don’t have more than 2GB of memory is useless. You don’t have more than 2048MB available so ???
Second, there is no reason to set this back to 2048. All memory intesive programs may need the extra memory. In a 32bit system, the OS does not need a gig of memory (if you have 3 or more GB the os would have a gig available under the default setting) so increase it and leave it increased.
Thanks to you all!
Did not try the DCDEDIT thing yet…
Will try it today! Hope it works…
:shock: newbie, here, i got this game because i liked Diablo 2 but i’m at a loss on how to even get it to work on my pc. I have vista hp too, i dlded the patch, did the bcdedit,but everytime i try to launch the game (run as admin) it still asks for the cd even if its already in the drive. do u guys know wat can i do? sori if i sound so tech-naive. :oops:
this is great advice.. i set mine to 3027 since i have 4gb installed and solved alot of problems it seems..i gonna test this on crysis here in a few i have the dreaded crash at start up\black screen\back to desktop :evil: this should be the next thing to fix b/c its really wide spread even with ver 1.21 installed :sad:
as far as Alex’s problem go’s
1:install all latest drivers for video card and mobo including the latest patch for diablo 2 and try again..
2:still nothing? run the game in compatability mode for win xp sp2. start by right clicking the shortcut of the game(if you dont have one,make one) and selecting properties>compatibility>check the box for “run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select winxp {service pack 2}..
3.if that dosent work find a no cd/dvd fix
go somewhere like here—->http://www.gamecopyworld.com
and do some lookin…
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im having all the same crash problems as everyone else.
i have the latest graphics card and 4g ram, my spec are good enough.
what i dont understand is once i type BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 2800 do i just close command prompt and restart? because i tried and i look at it again once i rebooted and its as if what i typed wasnt there wasnt even there.
im not experienced with working with command prompt is there a way you save it?
This didn’t work for me, the game still crashes after a few minutes of play :( I’ve tried lowering my settings (though I shouldn’t have to because my PC specs are pretty high.)
Goddamn I hate vista!
Thanks this helped a lot.
this fix solves the saving/loading crashes on windows 7?
this fix was for vista, considering that vista and windows 7 are quite close, I guess it would fix it. This has not been tested on Windows 7 though
do you think this could fix a similar problem i’m having with KOTOR2 on the same system (Vista home 32-bit)?
I have crash problems with witcher on win 7 vista fix wont work for win 7 and there doesn’t seem to be one around specifically for win 7 and the command prompt thing didn’t work either couldn’t even enter it. so i would apriciate any help on this matter
The game install with CRC errors
The game randomly crashes to desktop on 1.0
The update link on launcher is broken
The 1.4 patch gives CRC errors
The 1.4 CRC errors forces you to reinstall 1.0
The reinstallation show more CRC errors
The 1.4 installs with no errors
The game crashes to desktop in 1.4
The 1.5 patch gives CRC errors
The 1.5 CRC errors forces you to reinstall the game
The 1.0 1.4 1.5 install with no errors
The game crashes on 1.5
OMFG what an RPG game! I just leveled my installing games and patches skill to lvl 20!
@Astaroth hahaha i never had errors you must be installing wrong mines running 1.5 fine just crashes when i save on random occations lets just hope this works
Everything was going fine but I stopped playing the game for a while due to work. I started up again and then it started crashing every fifteen or so minutes. Did this fix and played for three and a half hours. Looks like it worked. Thanks for the tip!
this seems to have solved the problem for me, or at the least improve the stability of the game tremendously. My map used to turn black then the game would crash if I tried to save it. Happend about once every hour… after I did this fix I played for a few hours straight and no black map and save crash. Also I noticed that the memory in my windows system now reports the proper 4GB that I have in it.. before I did this it reported something like 3870
MB or something.
this fix works for win 7 32 bit, I recently try and it works for me
Games this unstable should not be released to the market and I want the developers to get sued for their dumbness.
Aren’t there any regulation that prevent this kind of crap from happening. The game is defective – NOW RECALL IT AND FIX THE GODDAMN PROBLEM OR PATCH THE F*CKING THING !!!