Game doesn't start at all

[steba]

When I try to start it, it just shows like the first frame of the intro and crashes. I've tried to verify files and use compatibility mode etc. but nothing seems to work. Anyone else having trouble starting this?

[nicolas65]

Yes, this is a very common problem. I keep coming back and retrying it, and have had zero luck for several months. People posting this issue usually have the same account come on and tell them to do lots of surgery to their software, and those who report back say that nothing helps, and some of the "fixes" only degraded their PC performance--that was my experience too. Good luck and please post here if you find a working fix.

[SHOCKNUTZ]

I think this *could* fix it.
Right click the game in Steam, manage, browse local files.

SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Alan Wake\bonus_material

Delete the Music folder in this directory (or place it somewhere else on your system if you want to keep it)
Try to start the game.

[nicolas65]

Deleting the music folder did change something--but it didn't fix the problem. With that folder deleted, the game immediately goes to black screen then quits. With the music folder, there is a brief flash to the opening before it crashes.

[steba]

Yeah still crashes immediately. If this is such a common problem, you can report a game on the store page that it's broken. If there are enough people reporting, maybe they'll be force to take a look at this.

[SHOCKNUTZ]

Originally posted by nicolas65:

Deleting the music folder did change something--but it didn't fix the problem. With that folder deleted, the game immediately goes to black screen then quits. With the music folder, there is a brief flash to the opening before it crashes.

try moving or deleting the entire bonus material folder then. see if that makes a difference. there is something in there thats causing problems.

[nicolas65]

Deleting the entire bonus materials folder does the same thing as deleting the music folder; it crashes immediately without the 1-2 seconds of the loading screen. Appreciate the suggestions, though.

[animal_PLANET]

Old school AW guide from their old forum. May help.

SOLVING GAME NOT LAUNCHING Problems
Here are some tips that you can try if you have problems launching the game, or get errors like DEVICE_CREATE_ERROR - Invalid Call. I'm assuming you have latest drivers installed already at this point and have tried verifying the game cache...

Delete resolution.xml from c:\users\<userid>\documents\Remedy\AlanWake and try again
Try if the game runs in a window. Enter -w1280 -h720 -window to Steam's Alan Wake Properties->Set Launch Options
Try starting the game with -nosound parameter

GENERAL

Command Line options

The game supports a few command line options meant mainly for troubleshooting. Warning: for advanced users only. Many of these options can be selected from in-game menus and we recommend doing that instead.

You can enter them by right clicking on Alan Wake in the Steam Library and choosing Properties. From there go to "Set launch options".

-w screen width (e.g. -w1280)
-h screen height (e.g. -h720)
-window force windowed
-novsync disables v-sync
-showfps shows a frame rate counter on screen
-forcesurround forces 5.1 speaker mode
-forcestereo forces stereo (2 channel) speaker mode
-nosound disables sound
-cleancloud deletes your save games and settings for Alan Wake from Steam Cloud
-noblur disables the in-game vector blur
-rigidcamera enables a "more stiff" mouse control/camera mode with camera centered behind Wake.
-directaiming enables a 1:1 mouse control mode (obsolete, recommend using menu option instead)
-sensscale (e.g. -sensscale=0.2) changes the mouse sensitivity scale slider in-game. Useful for some high DPI mice that feel way too sensitive even with the in-game menu set to low.
-freecamera allows toggling between normal and a gamepad controlled free camera by pressing right thumb stick (overrides the camera side toggling). This was added as many fans said they want to see the whole world that we have built. Use at your own risk, do not report any bugs or oddities with the game if this is enabled. Gamepad required!
-locale=xx forces a selected locale. This should not be needed as you can change it from the Game Properties in Steam. Note that you have to have the locale files downloaded from Steam and that happens only when you choose the language you want to play in from Steam.

Enabling Latin-American Spanish Localization

Steam doesn't unfortunately support this language dialect natively in the client, so it doesn't work exactly like the other languages. However, here's a guide how to get it running:

Download the language pack from Steam. There's a link in Steam's Alan Wake store page. The package size is about 200MB. The direct download link should be: https://store.steampowered.com/login...se?subid=13685
Add a command line option in the Steam UI ( "Alan Wake / Properties / General / Set Launch Options" ): -locale=esm

"No World Loaded" message is visible on screen

This is due to corrupted download. Please use the Steam Client's "Verify Integrity of Game Cache", you can find it in Alan Wake / Properties / Local Files.

GRAPHICS
Overclocked and "Factory overclocked" graphics cards

We've heard many reports of "occasional black screens", random crashes or computers shutting down that have been traced to overclocking or GPU overheating issues. Alan Wake does not cause computers to shut down or reboot - these are typically hard system failures and system shuts down to protect the components.

These issues have been solved in the end by down-clocking the graphics card. We recommend users try this first, this can typically be done in the graphics card drivers' control panel.

Another common issue causing weird graphics problems or computer behavior can be a power supply that's not powerful enough or beginning to fail.

CHEATS
Use -developermenu parameter if you really want to cheat, or play in Nightmare difficulty without playing the game through once.


SAVE GAMES and SAVE DATA
Alan Wake saves data to your "My Documents" folder (e.g. C:\Users\<username>\Documents) under Remedy\AlanWake. This contains resolution.xml and if enabled possibly some debugging information. Game regenerates these if not found. Your save game is stored under your Steam profile, and mirrored into Steam Cloud if that option is enabled.

Alan Wake does not store anything in your computers' registry. Steam uses registry to keep track of first time installation information and such issues.

[NNNinator]

Has any fix been found for this yet? Tried removing the bonus folder, tried deleting the resolution xml file, tried running it with the different prompts and couldn't getting it loaded past opening briefly just to immediately freeze and close.

[steba]

Originally posted by NNNinator:

Has any fix been found for this yet? Tried removing the bonus folder, tried deleting the resolution xml file, tried running it with the different prompts and couldn't getting it loaded past opening briefly just to immediately freeze and close.

No fix. Report the game on the store page as broken if you can't launch, flag above the metacritic score. That's about as much as we can do.

[NNNinator]

Originally posted by steba:

Originally posted by NNNinator:

Has any fix been found for this yet? Tried removing the bonus folder, tried deleting the resolution xml file, tried running it with the different prompts and couldn't getting it loaded past opening briefly just to immediately freeze and close.

No fix. Report the game on the store page as broken if you can't launch, flag above the metacritic score. That's about as much as we can do.

Got it, thanks anyway

[NeutronVortex]

Have you guys tried dxvk? If you didn't know, it's wrapper that translates the d3d api calls into vulcan. You can download it here:
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases
(dxvk-2.4.1.tar.gz is the one you want)

It's an archive within an archive so you have to unzip it twice, then just copy/paste the files inside the x32 folder from the dxvk archive into the Alan Wake install folder and then launch the game, and see if it'll run then.

[animal_PLANET]

Originally posted by steba:

Originally posted by NNNinator:

Has any fix been found for this yet? Tried removing the bonus folder, tried deleting the resolution xml file, tried running it with the different prompts and couldn't getting it loaded past opening briefly just to immediately freeze and close.

No fix. Report the game on the store page as broken if you can't launch, flag above the metacritic score. That's about as much as we can do.

What are your specs?

In the meantime, try this as it will only take a couple of minutes to do, and is easy troubleshooting to mitigate these types of issues.

Download latest display driver from NVIDIA or AMD. Before you install, run DDU to remove old driver first. Than install new one.

Here is link for DDU. Make sure to read/follow guide. Its in the link. https://www.wagnardsoft.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5092

Running DDU will remove previous driver/s completely and ensure a clean install. Like its being done for the first time on a newly installed OS. Just note that all NVIDIA/AMD control panel (app)/monitor settings will be reset and whenever you update the display driver shaders will recompile for certain games.

Try a clean boot. A clean boot will remove any potential conflicts with other software running in background. So disable all non essential services, programs and tasks from starting with PC. So use services (services app or system configuration app), tasks (task scheduler app, select task scheduler library), and startup items (task manager) to disable them.

Check all 3 areas. If anyone is enabled that software will run and could be causing conflicts with the game. This will also help free up system resources in general.

[nicolas65]

I've never seen anyone post back here after having this problem saying any of the fixes actually worked. If they do post back, it's to say either that the fix didn't work or that it didn't work and moreover degraded their PC's performance. Please do post back if any of these fixes actually solved the problem where the game crashes immediately after launching. Please also post back if the "fixes" don't help.

[NNNinator]

I tried 'em all and none of them worked. My PC is a dedicated gaming PC with a 3060 nvidia card. It should run fine, but it still doesn't.

[nicolas65]

Yes, that's consistent. I've reviewed the game as unplayable. If enough of us do this maybe someone will eventually fix it