Dirt Showdown not working

[madmaxneo1]

I haven't played the game in a long time and I was ready for some derby racing. But when I hit play in Steam the little grey box pops up for a second then disappears and nothing. It is not even listed in my task manager as running. So basically the game does not even start. Anyone else have this problem? Anyone know of any fixes for it?

[Guiizeer4]

I'm having the same problem , not my game starts not know what to do

[madmaxneo1]

I contacted codemasters and they are telling me that there is no support for windows 8 and the game was designed for win 7. What is interesting is the game was working fine on win 8 the last time I played it. So apparently there was some kind of update that made it not work at all in windows 8, and it was recent.

[EnemyWithin]

I had the same problem (also with GRID Autosport). I'm guessing that it has something to do with their DRM. Basically, I deleted the appmanifest file and had Steam re-run the inital setup. Both games now work.

Steps:

1). Close Steam
2). For DiRT Showdown...delete "appmanifest_201700.acf" from your Steam folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\appmanifest_201700.acf)
3). Start Steam
4). Right-click on DiRT Showdown and select Install Game
5). Wait for Steam to import files and possibly do a quick download (mine did).
6). Enjoy the game.

[RAID Noir]

I had to Verify Game cache.

Was able to play in Win 8.1 but in WIn 10 needed to verify it

[andrewsapp]

Thanks to EnemyWithin, I can now launch this game after the Windows 10 upgrade. Deleting the appmanifest_201700.acf file and re-installing the game did the trick. Looks like I have to do the same for Grid Autosport. Thanks EnemyWithin!

[madmaxneo1]

All I had to do was verify the game files and it works fine now. I am not sure what that process does but it works fine.

[OG ZooM]

Originally posted by EnemyWithin (lvl 100/1900 games):

I had the same problem (also with GRID Autosport). I'm guessing that it has something to do with their DRM. Basically, I deleted the appmanifest file and had Steam re-run the inital setup. Both games now work.

Steps:

1). Close Steam
2). For DiRT Showdown...delete "appmanifest_201700.acf" from your Steam folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\appmanifest_201700.acf)
3). Start Steam
4). Right-click on DiRT Showdown and select Install Game
5). Wait for Steam to import files and possibly do a quick download (mine did).
6). Enjoy the game.

Did not work! after that couldn't even delete the game. needed to restart computer.

But try to go to C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common/Dirt Showdown and right click the showdown.exe and go to properties and then put it to
compatibility mode to windows 7.

[sofressaissi]

Originally posted by RAID Noir:

I had to Verify Game cache.

Was able to play in Win 8.1 but in WIn 10 needed to verify it

You're a Life Savior thank you I had to verify the integrity of game files to fix the issue but in my case I think the issue occured after installing the latest update of windows 11.

[PurSpyk!!]

Same issue, worked in November last year now refuses to run, there are 3 games from code masters, Dirt Showdown, Grid Autosport & Grid 2 that have avx versions of the exe files, and all 3 of these games no longer run. Validating does not help

[boznian1977]

I have same issue,
hit play and it says "updating executable" and then nothing
i9 14900hx
32 gig DDR5
RTX4090 mobile.
Uninstalled and reinstalled, tried deleting the 201700 file, running the openal32.exe file and even tried compatibility for win 7 and 8.....NADA!

[ZenZone1]

Very similar issue. Clicked play and it stopped almost immediately and quietly, nothing happened. Verify cache, same thing, nothing happened. Difference is i don't even have the ...201700.acf file but why?

Well here's what i think: Maybe it was because the drive where the original OS (Windows 7) and Steam was installed and where the game was registered, was gone because the NVMe SSD drive died. I had to install Windows 10 and Steam on a new hdd. Some games on C were gone but those on D are still there, it's just that they weren't registered in Windows 10.

DIRT Showdown was one of the games installed on D with windows 7 on C but the registration on C was gone, with the OS. However many games still work despite being installed on D and with no registry info on the new drive and OS. All i had to do was configure Steam install folders to recognise where the rest of my games are. Most games still work with no re-installation needed. Some like this just refused to run, well because in addition to new OS installation, i had no internet for 2 months.

So some first time run of games don't work due to activation issues or game key or EULA missing or maybe missing registry entries.

So to cut a long story short, after verifying files did not work, i uninstalled the game. Remember that the 201700.acf file was missing at the time. I paused a moment to think before i re-download the game on D; maybe D was a bit faulty because some game failed to download due to disk write error. So i downloaded it on C this time.

WALA! it works but then i quit after verifying that it actually works again by loading the previous profile stored in the cloud. Reliving happy Showdown days can wait a bit longer i think.