FIX: Game will not start on modern processors

[hazimil]

Due to the way the game has been compiled, it will fail to load on some modern processors which have "too many" cores; well too many for the game to cope with.

A way to fix this without the need for any 3rd party downloads is as follows:

1) Within Steam Client, right-click on the game and select properties.
2) On the General tab, enter in the following in the Launch Options box:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity F "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut\DXHRDC.exe" %command%

3) Press enter to save the Launch Options, and then select X to close the window.
4) Press PLAY!

Note: Update the installation path if different from default!

[Deggial]

Do you know what this command does speciffically? There are quite a few old games that will crash unless you set affinity to one core manually thru Task Manager each time you launch (see LoK Defiance), or using process lasso or a mod like the one Doomhack made for this game.

Is there any way you can use a similar Steam command to force affinity to one core for those cases?

[hazimil]

Originally posted by Deggial:

Do you know what this command does speciffically? There are quite a few old games that will crash unless you set affinity to one core manually thru Task Manager each time you launch (see LoK Defiance), or using process lasso or a mod like the one Doomhack made for this game.

Is there any way you can use a similar Steam command to force affinity to one core for those cases?

I have broken it down into stages:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C
This instructs windows to carry out the following command, and then terminate (i.e. close the window).

start "" /affinity F
This executes the start command, which is in effect telling windows to start a new process and execute a program. The double quotes ("") is required, as this would normally give the CMD window a title bar. The /affinity command instruct windows to restrict the program to specific cores (processor affinity), using a hexadecimal number, i.e. F (15).

This doesn't mean 15 cores though (this is where it get confusing); it uses a hexadecimal number which is then converted to binary (in this case 1111), which tells windows to use Cores 1, 2, 3, and 4. If I used C instead of F, this would be 1100 in binary, and thus telling windows to use Cores 3 and 4.

More details about the start command can be found at: https://ss64.com/nt/start.html

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut\DXHRDC.exe"
This is the full path to the game to be run, including it's executable file.

%command%
The custom Launch Options is usually used to pass on parameters like -skipintro, -setup, etc. However if you put the complete launch path and then end it with %command%, then Steam will run that instead of just running the default exe file directly when launched.

Therefore, it should be possible to use this to run other steam games.

[Tihalnog]

thank you. It's worked

[Death Approaches]

Do you know what this command does speciffically?

basically, in decimal math it doubles each time because in binary it's on/off state... CPU0, your first real processor is 1, CPU1 is 2, CPU2 is 4, CPU3 is 8, CPU4 is 16... etc. knowing that 16 is 0x10 in hex is helpful, because you can look at a bitmask and know, by the 0x2/4/8/10 spacing for a lot of them, just off the top of your head. (well, I can, so you can too)

since he gave you the first 4 cores, let's do another; 2 real and 2 virt on a 4-core 4-hyperthread CPU... we'll leave cores 0 & 1 for the system, and use cores 2 & 3, followed by virtual cores 5 & 7, because why not?

4+8+32+128 = 172, and converted to a bitmask, is 10101100 (remember to read this from right to left!) and converted to hex, 0xac... /affinity ac

and now that you know this, you can make them, easy. let's take a 16/16 CPU and start in binary this time...we want 4 cores, all real cores... and remember we're into TWO BYTES now, so endianess of a system matters; luckily all x86 processors and windows itself are little endian, least significance, read from the right.. with the next byte AFTER the first, so that, 0xfe is 254, 0xff is 255, and 0x00+0x01 aka 0x100 is 256... so the active state of all 32 would be: 00000000000000000000000011110000... you're giving it 4 real cores, from #4-#7, converted to hex, 0xf0, or /affinity f0

if you want to test your endianess math on multi-bytes, go for it. if you wanted it to be on the last 4 real cores, can you figure it out? it would be 0xf000 for #12-#15, /affinity f000

got it? it's a little complicated but it's not hard. there's tutorials and even calculators on the web, just google "windows processor affinity" and you'll find much better explanations.

[DrunkenGoatOne]

Thank you very much, been waiting to replay this game a lot and didn't want to download 3rd party apps or tamper with any BIOS settings etc. Great fix.

[Galanoth9]

I'm not sure if it's just me or my PC, but this fix does not work for me for some reason. Running this on Windows 11 so idk if this post is older than Windows 11, but regardless it doesn't work for me and a fix would be appreciated.

[TazmanianD]

Hey, this actually worked for me too. I tried the equivalent command on the original edition and it doesn't seem to work there. I prefer the original over the director's cut.

[TazmanianD]

Actually, I have to take my last post back. Someone made a comment about changing the compatibility settings for the game. I noticed that whenever I start the game (the original edition), I get a "Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC" warning. I thought maybe that was somehow interfering with this affinity setting.

So I went into the dxhr.exe compatibility settings and unchecked "Run this program as an administrator" and now I can play the original edition too. Yay!

[Sherv]

Originally posted by Galanoth9:

I'm not sure if it's just me or my PC, but this fix does not work for me for some reason. Running this on Windows 11 so idk if this post is older than Windows 11, but regardless it doesn't work for me and a fix would be appreciated.

Same here, on Win 11. Forcing 4 cores doesn't make a difference, the error in Event Viewer is always the same:

Faulting application path: F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut\DXHRDC.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

This is disappointing.

[Jinxlord]

Thanks! The fiix works well!

[CCCCradle]

I also ran into this problem and tried this method but it still crashed the same.
I'll note how I solved the problem.
My PC:Win10, RTX 2060, i7-13700K
1. Steam Properties -> set -setup in the startup options. The launcher will be launched.
2. Uncheck Use DirectX 11 in the launcher and press OK.
3. Return the startup options to empty and startup.
That's all.

[Crystal Sharrd]

I hex edited the executable using instructions on PCGamingWiki, although I've also the imagecfg utility in the past.

[ScoutDog]

Still works. It didn't at first. Forehead slap. On a different drive. Edited location to D:\SteamLibrary\* All good

[bowsers2]

Originally posted by hazimil:

Due to the way the game has been compiled, it will fail to load on some modern processors which have "too many" cores; well too many for the game to cope with.

A way to fix this without the need for any 3rd party downloads is as follows:

1) Within Steam Client, right-click on the game and select properties.
2) On the General tab, enter in the following in the Launch Options box:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity F "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut\DXHRDC.exe" %command%

3) Press enter to save the Launch Options, and then select X to close the window.
4) Press PLAY!

Note: Update the installation path if different from default!

Tried your easy to follow instructions, but doesn't work for me.
Any Ideas with other potential solutions ? I'm desperate to play this game.
Please explain like your talking to a 5 year old.

My PC: 4080 Super. Ryzen 9800X3D, Windows 11. 32 GB RAM.

[The Jaguar]

Originally posted by bowsers2:

Originally posted by hazimil:

Due to the way the game has been compiled, it will fail to load on some modern processors which have "too many" cores; well too many for the game to cope with.

A way to fix this without the need for any 3rd party downloads is as follows:

1) Within Steam Client, right-click on the game and select properties.
2) On the General tab, enter in the following in the Launch Options box:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity F "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut\DXHRDC.exe" %command%

3) Press enter to save the Launch Options, and then select X to close the window.
4) Press PLAY!

Note: Update the installation path if different from default!

Tried your easy to follow instructions, but doesn't work for me.
Any Ideas with other potential solutions ? I'm desperate to play this game.
Please explain like your talking to a 5 year old.

My PC: 4080 Super. Ryzen 9800X3D, Windows 11. 32 GB RAM.

I'm running Windows 11 too and I just opened my computer's System Configuration, clicked on the "Boot" tab, clicked on the "Advanced Options" button, and then checked the box that says "Number of Processors" and used the drop down menu under this checked box to set the number of processors to 3. After that I just clicked "Apply" and restarted the computer to make these changes take effect, and the game worked fine after that. Of course, you'll have to un-check the "Number of Processors" box and restart your computer again when you're done playing DX to undo these changes and enable all the processors (cores) again. Hope this works for you! :)