Our author Schuhmann is having problems with Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC, all the issues you can imagine. A PC game hasn’t caused this many headaches in years.
PC gaming is no longer as bad as many console players imagine and as it was for me in the past.
Ten years ago, I regularly sat with a screwdriver in front of my computer to fix something: A fan was clogged, a contact was loose.
There were Windows reinstalls, I had to defragment hard drives regularly, power supplies didn’t have enough power after a graphics card upgrade – all that stuff.
Everything was great until I met Red Dead Redemption 2
But with my new computer, I haven’t had any problems for years. The only thing I still regularly do is install graphics card drivers and occasionally check and clean the registry.
My PC is completely oversized for everything I play on it. The games have been running smoothly for years.
My screwdriver has been unemployed since then.
At least that was the case until Red Dead Redemption 2 landed on my hard drive.
Just the installation took hours and crashed multiple times.
Then I couldn’t play the game, because “Red Dead Redemption 2” unexpectedly closed. The game either crashed already in the menu or shortly after.
That was a launch error that many had: like Twitch streamer JERICHO.
Because I wanted to play desperately, I searched for a solution to the startup problems of RDR2, rummaged through forums, followed the advice, and somehow got Red Dead Redemption 2 to run in windowed mode and with DirectX 12 instead of Vulkan.
That’s the old illusion: If I tweak something on the 50 different sliders in the menu – reduce shadow quality or something, it suddenly runs much better.
After the change, the game ran, but I had the worst graphic glitches. Strange flickering at the bottom of the screen – I felt like I was back in the early 90s.
When Red Dead Redemption 2 ran somewhat stably after initial patches, I noticed stuttering – the game just froze for several seconds. The audio track continued to play, but nothing else happened.
Despite great graphics and an exciting story, the stuttering ruined any sense of immersion when the world suddenly stood still for 8 seconds.
Apparently, I had exactly the combination of NVIDIA graphics card and CPU that Red Dead Redemption 2 does not like at all, which leads to all these issues.
When the stuttering was finally fixed after a patch, I wanted to play online – but the game randomly crashed again and again. Online, nothing worked. So I continued with the story, which was just starting to bring me joy.
I had planned to push people into the water in Red Dead Redemption 2 and all that stuff.
Once I tried something myself – immediately messed up
The latest problems with Red Dead Redemption 2 were then on my account. For 2 days, the game crashed because “virtual memory” was missing. It wouldn’t even load anymore.
I was about to throw Red Dead Redemption 2 against the wall for good, then I realized that earlier, when I wanted to clean up the registry, I had removed the auto-start program.
I had removed a program that managed the SSD hard drive. I never understood what that thing did. Now I know: It also regulates the virtual memory and ensures that my PC functions as it should.
Without the program in the autostart, Red Dead Redemption 2 no longer worked. While I could play everything else wonderfully, Red Dead Redemption 2 didn’t work.
The only thing I still tinker with on the PC only made it worse! Okay, that was my fault.
But what is Rockstar’s fault: Every time RDR2 crashes and I want to log back into the Rockstar Launcher, I have to do some captcha work and find buses, crosswalks, or traffic lights. I feel like an idiot every time because I never know if that picture that shows 99% landscape and 1% traffic light still counts as a traffic light or not.
Captcha also simply claims: No, that’s not it. Try again, you robot-dude.
Even worse is that my colleague Patrick Freese says: He has no idea what my problem is. For him, Red Dead Redemption 2 runs perfectly – and has since day one.
Maybe this is the game’s revenge on me for daring to doubt it before the PC release.
