Dark Messiah of Might and Magic be all end all crash fix

[Tasty_Guerilla]

This game is good, and I mean good. I want to play it so badly but it doesn't want to play. It takes a year for it to load, doesn't show up with any steam in-game menu, and decides to crash as soon as I'm out of the tutorial. I tried to run as administrator and on compatibility mode, neither of which has helped. Should download the patch or tweak the ini? I run it smoothe at max settings at I belive 60 fps. Any help appreciated to get this wonder game to run?
Information:
Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
Model: HP ENVY TS 17 Notebook PC
Form Factor: Laptop
CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz
Operating System Version:
Windows 10 (64 bit)
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

[5M0k1N]

did you try forcing compatibility with xp? instead of the generic compatibility mode? also try verifying game cache just in case. as for no steam overlay maybe you disabled it? make sure its enabled

[Tasty_Guerilla]

I don't know how to force compatibility with xp, but I tried to verify game cache, the game takes forever to run and I'll get back to you if it crashes.

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Yep crash. Do you think the 1.02 or 1.01 patch by ubisoft would solve this problem?

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Ok, so feel pretty dumb. The patch isn't needed for steam version. So still kinda at a loss.

[5M0k1N]

hmm dont think so but worth a shot i suppose. also if you have antivirus you might want to disable it temporarily just in case

[Tasty_Guerilla]

I rather not turn off my antivirus, could I allow my antivirus to run the instance. I have norton and I think this it a bitdefender problem

[That guy]

My game kept crashing until I installed it on my main C drive and ran without compatibility mode enabled. If you have it on an external drive you might try that.

[Tasty_Guerilla]

How do I fix how long it takes to load up the game? It takes roughly 20 minutes to load the game up.

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Originally posted by Alabaster Tent Kite:

My game kept crashing until I installed it on my main C drive and ran without compatibility mode enabled. If you have it on an external drive you might try that.

How do you install it on your main c drive? Is it window c?

[Kill Switch]

Disabling the intro videos and the creature model it shows on the main menu improved loading times for me. You can do this by right-clicking the game in Steam, select Properties, Set Launch Options, and entering this in the field there:

-novid +map_background none

[Aku]

The game doesn't even launch when I run it in compatibility mode so I always run it in default mode. Don't think compatibility is the culprit. This game seems to run pretty well on some systems and not on others. You can download the ADK from Microsoft and play around with the settings in the compatibility administrator (32-bit version). You just point to the mm.exe file and try checking some of the options and click the test run button to see if anything improves. Sort of hit-and-miss.

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Originally posted by Kill Switch:

Disabling the intro videos and the creature model it shows on the main menu improved loading times for me. You can do this by right-clicking the game in Steam, select Properties, Set Launch Options, and entering this in the field there:

-novid +map_background none

Thank you Kill Switch, that reduce the load time significantly. Unforunately still crashing and glitching

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Ok, so game runs pretty smoothly now, except that it crashes when I exit which is a minor inconvenience and has no effect on the game play. Steam in-game menu is now working too.Thank you everyone for your help, especially Kill Switch and Dorian, who's suggestions helped the most. This discussion is now closed.

[5M0k1N]

what fixed the crashing? post it for future reference

[Tasty_Guerilla]

Well first off, I went to Ubisoft support chat and they offered solid advice. But what really helped I think was turning it off compatibility mode, and putting "-novid +map_background none" into the launch option, which I believed sorted both problems. It was difficult to setup and it did seem impossible to setup at first, but if you go through the trouble of troubleshooting your problem, this game is very worth it.