Game won't launch (tried everything)

[Molda22]

As title says, i cannot launch the game on my fathers PC no matter what we do. I tried it on my PC when i got back home and for me it works, but on his PC nothing works. (he has nvidia 980 card and all other specs good enough)
When i launch it, steams looks like the game is running, but its not. The green PLAY button turns to blue STOP button for like 5-10 seconds, there is no window, no game, nothing, and after few seconds the button turns back to the green PLAY button. I tried the following:
- restarting steam
- restarting PC
- reinstalling NMS
- verify integrity of files
- updating nvidia drivers
- using nvidia app / not using nvidia app
- trying different launch parameters suggested somewhere like -dx11, -dx12, -windowed
- trying stopping windows audio service
- making sure there are no antivirus programs running
- running as admin
- try running it from steam client
- try running it from nms.exe
- try switching to experimental branch
- someone said you need to make sure you have windows update from 12 november 2024 and he has it installed correctly

And nothing works. Still the same. Cannot launch the game. I dont think i have ever seen something like in more than 30 years of playing games, where literally nothing helps.
Anyone having the same issue?

[Musashi]

Did you also try NMS.exe as admin ?

You may also try a clean boot.. there Hide all Microsoft Services .. and next disable all but steam .. follow the procedure
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-of-windows-11

[Molda22]

sadly nothing works. it is crazy. i was praising the developers for years of free updates etc, but if lot of people cannot even start the game, then i guess i was to hasty with my praise. I have searched and i am the only one with this issue.

[smurfy]

A GTX 980 is now sadly below the minimum supported specs for the game. But, much like those with an AMD R9 3xx card, it should still at least run the game, at least since the 5.62 patch.

The 980 supports Vulkan 1.3. The game is now using 1.4. Updating the nVidia drivers may have been a bad option for that card.

Open a command prompt (Windows Key +R, type cmd [ENTER])
Type vulkaninfo --summary [ENTER]
Copy & paste (highlight it all with the mouse, and right-click to copy) the Devices section here.
Will look something like this (this is from my laptop, so has 2 devices)

Devices:
========
GPU0:
        apiVersion         = 1.3.289
        driverVersion      = 101.5972
        vendorID           = 0x8086
        deviceID           = 0xa78b
        deviceType         = PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_INTEGRATED_GPU
        deviceName         = Intel(R) RaptorLake-S Mobile Graphics Controller
        driverID           = DRIVER_ID_INTEL_PROPRIETARY_WINDOWS
        driverName         = Intel Corporation
        driverInfo         = 101.5972
        conformanceVersion = 1.3.6.3
        deviceUUID         = 86808ba7-0400-0000-0002-000000000000
        driverUUID         = 33322e30-2e31-3031-2e35-393732000000
GPU1:
        apiVersion         = 1.4.303
        driverVersion      = 572.83.0.0
        vendorID           = 0x10de
        deviceID           = 0x28a0
        deviceType         = PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_DISCRETE_GPU
        deviceName         = NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
        driverID           = DRIVER_ID_NVIDIA_PROPRIETARY
        driverName         = NVIDIA
        driverInfo         = 572.83
        conformanceVersion = 1.4.1.0
        deviceUUID         = c11a7e3d-6e5c-bfe5-2c55-47562414cf3e
        driverUUID         = 5680ea73-87fe-5ac2-8bad-22826d85d208

[catch22atplay]

Maxwell 1st gen gtx 930mx thru gtx960m and 2nd gen gtx 950 thru gtx Titan X all support Vulkan 1.4. Anything below this does not support it.

NVIDIA provides full Vulkan 1.4 support and functionality on NVIDIA GeForce, RTX and Quadro series graphics card with one of the following Blackwell, Ada Lovelace, Ampere, Turing, Volta, Pascal and Maxwell (first and second generation) based GPUs:

https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

And note a GTX 980 4gb performs slightly better to significantly better depending on game vs gtx 1060 3gb the min requirements for NMS. The 1060 6gb ties in some games and outperforms the 980 on some games. The last just to show the significance of extra vmem.

Trying -dx11 or -dx12 for a Vulkan game has zero effect. It does for some games like Red Dead Redemption 2 as it has both direct x and vulkan. As to why you can't start the game i've no idea. Disable all overlays? Maybe go back to 566.36 drivers as 570+ are pretty bad.

[Molda22]

Originally posted by smurfy:

A GTX 980 is now sadly below the minimum supported specs for the game. But, much like those with an AMD R9 3xx card, it should still at least run the game, at least since the 5.62 patch.

The 980 supports Vulkan 1.3. The game is now using 1.4. Updating the nVidia drivers may have been a bad option for that card.

Open a command prompt (Windows Key +R, type cmd [ENTER])
Type vulkaninfo --summary [ENTER]
Copy & paste (highlight it all with the mouse, and right-click to copy) the Devices section here.
Will look something like this (this is from my laptop, so has 2 devices)

So we managed to make it work and your post helped, but not directly, it was crazy random thing but your post helped to get to the problem. When we put the code you suggested into the command prompt, it showed some error and only few lines and there was something about vulkan 1.4 and "mirillis" 1.1 and there was even line that said "maye cause issues". Mirillis Action is program for recording video from games. The program was not open, not even any hidden process but it led me to believe that maybe if i update the program to newest version, maybe it updates some vulkan compatibility and it can somehow help.
My father was not using the program for long time so it was not updated for long time. After the update i tried the code from you in comand prompt again, and it looked like it generated the summary OK. So then i just tried to start the game again and it worked.
I still dont really fully understand what happened and why program that was not even running was somehow interfering with NMS, but if you didnt said i try the code in command prompt, i guess i would have never find out the real issue that was causing all this. So thank you a lot.

BTW even though the 980 is below minimum spec like you said, the game is running on medium to high settings on 60 FPS without problems so that is nice surprise.

[Musashi]

Actually the reason was that outdated version of Mirrils.. doesnt matter if it was not running...it causes an error when it is installed
The symptom is like you did describe.. NMS seems to be running ... and if you open Taskmanager you can see that NMS is running ...after a while it times out .. unfourtunately without an error message

Thanks @smurfy for that code.. it can be useful for other topics

[catch22atplay]

Running the vulkan summary is a good way to check overlays that are running in Vulkan. Most overlays run in vulkan btw. And yes that command is very useful. OBS, Twitch, and looks like Mirillis all recording software btw have overlays that cause nms to have issues and a number of others.

You either update the offending software. Run it and find a setting to disable it completely. Although this often doesn't help and if it doesn't you uninstall it. I have 3 lines saying GoG galaxy blah blah for years now but thankfully no issues. I also have RTSS is using Vulkan 1.3 instead of 1.4 and may cause issues. It works fine though. Note i have quite a few overlays running atm and it will only list what it thinks may cause issues. So always worth looking into those specific entries.

I don't have rtss issues but the vulkaninfo --summary line looks like this for RTSS.

WARNING: [Loader Message] Code 0 : Layer VK_LAYER_RTSS uses API version 1.3 which is older than the application specified API version of 1.4. May cause issues

So that mirillis code looked very similar except it said 1.1 an even older version which is really a red flag.

And note a lot and in fact most all programs that have overlays run in the background even when you aren't using the program. I've check galaxy in task manager and even in details tab and no galaxy programs are running. Yet i get 3 warning messages. Even checked services and they're stopped there. So sadly it is normal behavior. It's also why so many have trouble trying to figure out why a game isn't working.