Game freezes for no apparent reason (central topic)

[darkje]

Lately some people have reported the game freezes on them for no apparent reason. I'm looking in to this hoping to find a fix. For now I created this central topic, to gather as much info as possible about the conditions causing this problem. I will try to analyze if there is a common factor, and hope we can crack it down.

reporting:
If you encounter this issue please report your system specifications: version of windows, cpu, ram, graphics card and vram, driver version, install location, harddisk,- or solidstate drive and if you can also the sound device used.
If you found a solution that works for you, please report that, so others can benefit from it.

suggested solutions:
some users made suggestions that (at least temporary) fixed it for them, I will list those suggestions here, for others to try.

- I'm guessing it's a good idea to (temporary) disable the added textures if you have them installed, just to make sure these are not the cause. You can do this by renaming the 'data' directory in your game directory to something else, like 'dat'. Renaming it back to 'data' will enable them again.

- Lethal Placebo wrote: Hey, at this point I think I can confirm that disabling fullscreen optimization worked for me, the game no longer crashes, though with a caveat. I got intermittent frame drops of about 5-7 frames, for seemingly no reason. This can be set by navigating to the Max Payne install directory, right-clicking maxpayne.exe, clicking properties, going to the compatibility tab, and ticking the "disable fullscreen optimizations"

- [REFORMED] JÄGARN wrote: Try playing on software option worked for me.

- Lufka wrote: I started to play in a windowed mode so i can restart the game in no time.

- Yezuk noticed that under circumstances the stutters would disappear when sound was disabled from the game launcher, probably whit indirect sound used. It's not clear yet if the same thing happens using the ultimate soundpatch. Of course no sound is useless but it might be something to play with or try the alternate fix, because it's known indirect sound is hard on some sound chips. in his case the problem disappeared after a reboot.
I've had reports that:
- moving the game to an other drive, from ssd to hdd, did it for some people.

- when you see two graphics cards in the the game-launcher, using the second one maybe better.

- use dgVoodoo's dx8to11 wrapper, launch the dgVoodooCpl from the game directory and select your actual graphics card there, instead of "all of them".

[Lufka]

i started to play in a windowed mode so i can restart the game in no time. None of the solutions above helped, it happens randomly after 2 minutes or one hour of gameplay, there is no rule.

[darkje]

Originally posted by Lufka:

i started to play in a windowed mode so i can restart the game in no time. None of the solutions above helped, it happens randomly after 2 minutes or one hour of gameplay, there is no rule.

that's a solution too, thank you for posting.

[Nucas]

win10 20h2
8700k
16gb ddr4
gtx 1060 6gb, drivers 461.09
installed on an ssd to D:\Steam Data\steamapps\common\Max Payne
was using my motherboard's audio going to speakers when the hard freeze happened. i also have an asus xonar pcie sound card going to headphones.

its only happened once to me in about 5 hours of playtime so far. i had to reset the computer, i think a first since i upgraded to windows 10 years ago.

another peculiarity i've seen is when turning the mouse on the x axis, the view will "skip" around in large sudden jerks. this has only happened in 2 specific locations, both around certain in-game cinematic points - during the fight with jack lupino, and then in the hotel lobby shortly before the fight with frankie niagara.

[HOAX]

I have the same issue. "Lethal Placebo`s" solution didn`t help for me, in fact it just made my mouse freeze as well.

It seems like it always happens during shooting between multiple enemies after some minutes of gameplay. Always during bullet time, though that may just be coincidental as I always use it. I constantly save, so when I meet up on some guys and the game freezes during the shootout, then I can load the last save and the game won`t freeze for at least a few minutes.

Windowed mode and lots of saving I guess is the best solution for now.

Win10
G4560
8GB DDR4
GTX 1050 Ti (471.68)
Installed on HDD (D:\)

[Myth[Alex]]

Have you guys tried changing / lowering the polling rate value to 125 Hz ? it can be done via your mouse software. A high value (500 ; 1000) may cause various problems to old games.

[TIGHT,TIGHT,TIGHT]

Originally posted by MythAlex:

Have you guys tried changing / lowering the polling rate value to 125 Hz ? it can be done via your mouse software. A high value (500 ; 1000) may cause various problems to old games.

thanks got mine set to 400 thought that would be low enough il try lower.

[TIGHT,TIGHT,TIGHT]

gtx 970
rysen 3500
16gb ram ddr4
win 10
saved on second hdd (not one with windows installed)

game freezes at random times, cant open task manager or alt tab to anything, have to alt, ctrl, del then log out then cancel log out.

[GATTACA]

I always freeze at same spot: Boss fight at bar.

windows 10. i5-4440. 20G DDR3. RX580.

[TIGHT,TIGHT,TIGHT]

Originally posted by GATTACA:

I always freeze at same spot: Boss fight at bar.

windows 10. i5-4440. 20G DDR3. RX580.

it froze for me there consistently, but i restarted my pc and it didnt freeze.

[kicks]

hi, i just downloaded the game and applied your patch. played it for about an hour and then after i re-opened the game, i was experiencing insane stutters that made the game unplayable. i played around with client options and disabling sound fixed the stutter completely and makes the game butter smooth, yet obviously, unplayable. just wanted to let you know that disabling the sound fixes it, hope it helps

EDIT: restarting my pc actually fixed it lol... but the game did crash without an error after playing it for 30 seconds. however it didnt crash again afterwards. i'll update if anything goes bad again

[darkje]

Originally posted by yezuk:

hi, i just downloaded the game and applied your patch. played it for about an hour and then after i re-opened the game, i was experiencing insane stutters that made the game unplayable. i played around with client options and disabling sound fixed the stutter completely and makes the game butter smooth, yet obviously, unplayable. just wanted to let you know that disabling the sound fixes it, hope it helps

EDIT: restarting my pc actually fixed it lol... but the game did crash without an error after playing it for 30 seconds. however it didnt crash again afterwards. i'll update if anything goes bad again

was this with indirect sound (default) or with the conversion soundfix, or did it happen with both?

[kicks]

Originally posted by darkje:

Originally posted by yezuk:

hi, i just downloaded the game and applied your patch. played it for about an hour and then after i re-opened the game, i was experiencing insane stutters that made the game unplayable. i played around with client options and disabling sound fixed the stutter completely and makes the game butter smooth, yet obviously, unplayable. just wanted to let you know that disabling the sound fixes it, hope it helps

EDIT: restarting my pc actually fixed it lol... but the game did crash without an error after playing it for 30 seconds. however it didnt crash again afterwards. i'll update if anything goes bad again

was this with indirect sound (default) or with the conversion soundfix, or did it happen with both?

without the fix the game wouldnt open due to ryzen issue. so it was with the whole fix patch

[darkje]

Originally posted by yezuk:

...without the fix the game wouldnt open due to ryzen issue. so it was with the whole fix patch

Ok thanks for reporting back on that!

There are 2 possible options for the sound in the fix, indirect sound and ultimate soundpatch, i was hoping you tried them both, but i guess it was only the default one and that's indirect sound. I'll take note and put in the opening post to try with sound disabled in the launcher.

[vini1264]

I've tested the game with the sound disabled on the laucher, and the game indeed runs fine with no freezing at all. It seems that MP1 on modern PCs has a hard time loading the sounds ingame and starts to stutter, at least on HDD, I don't know about SSD tho.

[PM]

I had the same issue. I have installed the widescreen fix and the sound fix, but the game seems to freeze randomly during gun fights.

I tried to disable the "Full Screen Optimization" of Windows for Max Payne, but it didn't help that much. However, it did allow me to progress a bit further into the game (my game froze 3 times in a row at the same gun fight before I decided to disable the fullscreen optimization).

What seems to work for me, is to run the game under "Windows XP Service Pack 2" compatibilty mode. This seems to have fixed the freezing problem.