Game crashes on launch.

[Megatron Prime]

Spent some time tinkering with the game files.

In the file directory I noticed there were 2 different launchers for the game. PlayGTAIV and GTAIV.exe. I found out PlayGTAIV.exe runs when you launch it through the Social Club launcher and GTAIV.exe runs when you try through steam. Unfortunately neither of them work.

PlayGTAIV gave errors about missing files by the name of vcrruntime140 and msvcp140, both of which I was able to find but was then thrown a 0x000007b error that I've had no luck in fixing

GTAIV.exe gave no errors, but simply crashed to desktop about 5 seconds after it launched according the the task manager.

As such, I was wondering if anyone else encountered this issue or could offer any advice, verifying the integrity of the files didn't seem to yield anything and neither did a fresh reinstall

[Vandal]

This is my situation on 3 different computers. If anyone knows of a solution I would greatly appreciate it .

[Nathanael]

I'm also getting the same. Am reinstalling right now in the hope that it works itself out, but that's a fair bit of wishful thinking on my part

[Jurassic Fart 3]

Maybe "tinkering" is not such a stellar idea. BTW, those aforementioned files are not both launchers. One is clearly NAMED a launcher using the string "Play" and the other is the base game EXE, which is called by the launcher. Both the Steam-created shortcuts and the Steam interface work just fine to launch. And, if you are so equipped, the optionally-installed Rockstar Games Launcher works without issues as well¹.

¹That launcher will not detect Steam "ownership" of games; only Rockstar games that are currently installed may be detected during a scan and consequently launched. The application may be downloaded free of charge from Rockstar.

[Megatron Prime]

Originally posted by Vandal:

This is my situation on 3 different computers. If anyone knows of a solution I would greatly appreciate it .:isaac:

Originally posted by Nathanael:

I'm also getting the same. Am reinstalling right now in the hope that it works itself out, but that's a fair bit of wishful thinking on my part

I think I found a fix. In the GTA4 directory, click on the "PlayGTAIV" exe, if it throws an error saying that its missing both a vcruntime140.dll and a msvcp140.dll, that means that you'll just need to download the 32-bit versions of those files from a reputable site like dll-files.com.

If i had to guess, since our pc's are 64-bit, the microsoft visual studio redistributables download .dll files in 64-bit. GTA4 being as old as it is, was made in 32 bit and needs that version of the file to run properly.

[Jurassic Fart 3]

Megatron: No. While I am forced to be honest and admit that I have NO idea why you are having this problem, I can guarantee that

Originally posted by Megatron Prime:

If i had to guess, since our pc's are 64-bit, the microsoft visual studio redistributables download .dll files in 64-bit. GTA4 being as old as it is, was made in 32 bit and needs that version of the file to run properly.

is not the reason—that's not what is happening...at least, that's not what happens on my system, and I haven't any reason to believe...look, how about I show my specs? Your system and mine should behave identically with respect to what dependencies Steam "decides" to download, but...who knows? Maybe some screwball difference explains why it happens to you and not to me. Take a look and see if anything jumps out at you:

Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P motherboard w/Intel chipset
16 GB Skilljaws DDR4 SDRAM
nVIDIA (Gigabyte) GeForce GTX-1660 Super Windforce / 6 GB GDDR6
i5-6600K 3.5 GHz Quad-Core CPU (water-cooled)
Crucial MX500 2 TB SSD
650 W Power Supply
Windows 10 x64 Home (OEM) 20H2

Everything's fully updated.