"DeadIsland has stopped working" - Windows 8

[Landshark]

Both my Wife and myself just re-intsalled Dead Island through steam, we both have windows 8 x64. When we try to start the game we are both greeted with the message, "DeadIsland has stopped working" with no other information.

The game will not start. Any ideas?

We've tried changing the "En" to "en" suggestion, I've tried running as administrator, and also tried verifying the game cache. Nothing changes the crash on the game's startup.

Is this game just broken in Windows 8?

[spsinagra]

me too! please help ASAP post answer please

[IrishGuard]

tried updating your drivers? if that doesnt work.. try running the game as windows xp service pack 2 or windows 7 or something to see if it works that way maybe its a win 8 issue

[Landshark]

I've tried running as Windows 7, several different versions of XP, I've updated all drivers (but this happens on BOTH of my home PC's, not just one, which are both using different drivers). I've also tried restarting the steam client.

Nothing works.
That fact that it's the same problem on both of my computers makes me think it's a Windows 8 issue.

[hendawg2020]

Sorry to hear this. It appears there are quite a few people having issues with running Dead Island on Windows 8. I do not have Windows 8 but I am trying to collect information that might help people be able to run this game, and this includes on Windows 8. I see that you have attempted a few of the possible solutions I mention in the stickied thread "Common Issues and Possible Fixes", but have you attempted them all? One thing not yet included in that thread is that games tend to work best when they are in Steam's default download location...ie: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

I assume that your computers probably meet the minimum requirements to run the game since you've been able to play it before. I believe this must be a Windows-related error only, but is more frequent with Windows 8. I am still trying to find a solution/solutions to this issue.

One thing you MIGHT want to look into is Dead Island Helper. I haven't looked into it much, but it could very well help solve your problem.

[Landshark]

Just in case this helps,
Both PC's I'm having trouble running them on are Intel Core i5 and i7, with 8gb and 16gb of ram respectively. They are also running with a GTX570 and a GTX670 respectively, both using the full install version (not the upgrade) of Windows 8 x64.

And yes both of these PC's played Dead Island (mostly) fine when they had Win7 (I say mostly, because there was a dual-monitor issue where we had to disable one monitor for it to work, but otherwise the game played fine).

[mgsmith02]

DI in Windows 8 x64 (full install) GTX670 works no problem for me, you could try running the executable in compatibility mode for Win7 or WinXP and see if that helps?

[Landshark]

So, eventviewer gives me this error:
Faulting module name: filesystem_x86_rwdi.dll

When I look that up it has to do with not being able to write to the my documents folder.

The thing is, both my Wife and myself have our my documents folders on a networked server (which is also set to always available offline).

The conclusion is that Dead Island isn't able to write to a network folder, even if started in admin mode. Other games do it just fine, but for some reason Dead Island won't.

I also tried mapping my networked my documents folder to a drive letter "Z" and then included that as my only library location in Windows for My Documents, but that still didn't work.

So, unless someone knows how to get Dead Island to write to networked folders, this game is useless to me.

[Landshark]

Another thought, if there was a way to make Dead Island not use the my documents folder, that would work too.

[PaulMD]

I had the exact same issue - this fixed it for me (don't use UNC for my docs). http://forums.steamgames.com/forums/showpost.php?s=64fca526bcfdd1e33d458ddaa0b72caa&p=24955056&postcount=13

[Landshark]

Thanks.

After doing a ton of research I found the following steps that worked for me, similar to what you posted above.

The summary of the below steps is:
1) Create a symbolic link to your networked my documents folder and put that symbolic link in your c:\users\username\ folder
2) Find your SSID
3) Using your SSID, find your key, and change the networked path to your my documents to now point back to your symbolic link.


Here are the full steps:

Problem:

Launching Dead Island results in a crash (DeadIsland has stopped working)

Solution:

An issue I have actually had with other programs is that my My Documents folder is re-directed to the network. Apparently, this causes issues with some games (Dead Island being one of them).

*DISCLAIMER* Change the registry at your own risk, you can mess your system up pretty badly if you do something wrong. I recommend backing up those trees just in case so you can restore if you need to.

1) Using the command prompt as admin, go to your user directory (C:\Users\{yourusername}) and add a symbolic link to your network "My Documents" folder. The command looks like this:

mklink /D Documents \\path\to\remote\documents

This will create a symbolic link called "Documents". Really you can name it anything you like, the name Documents is just a suggestion, but note what it is called.

Example:
mklink /d Documents "\\homeserver\users\PacerDawn\My Documents"

2) Using regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

3) Expand this, and you will see several folders with cryptic names, like 'S-1-5-18', 'S-1-5-19', etc. These are SSIDs. We need to identify which one is for your user account so select each one, and find one with a "ProfileImagePath" key value of "C:\USERS\{yourusername}". Note the SSID.

Example:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-123456809-413220807-1687855207-1000]
SSID = S-1-5-21-123456809-413220807-1687855207-1000

4) Navigate to "HKEY_USERS\{SSID}\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" in regedit, where {SSID} is the SSID we noted above. Change the value for "Personal" from your remote network location to %USERPROFILE%\Documents

Example:
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-123456809-413220807-1687855207-1000\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Exp lorer\User Shell Folders]
Change From: Personal="\\homeserver\users\PacerDawn\My Documents"
Change To: Personal="%USERPROFILE%\Documents"

(NOTE: If you didn't name the symbolic link "Documents" in the first step, use that name for %USERPROFILE%\Documents in this step.)

[Chaz]

This does work with Windows 8, check to see if you have this installed :

D3DX9_43.dll

If you don't downloading the dll file will make it work.

[Landshark]

Thank you, but I've already confirmed the issue was with the 'my documents' folder being located on a network drive.

[Chaz]

LOL, well congrats.

So what are you doing here posting, get back to the Island and Kick some ZOMBIE A s s Soldier !

[One Sharp Marine]

Hi guys, I just got my win8 computer today and I'm having the same issue, I tried all of these possible solutions. Any other ideas, y'all?

[Chaz]

Unfortunately none other than that which was already listed.... Keep at it, eventually you'll figure it out.