Tropico 4 just doesn't launch. At all. Not even the launcher

[Myzzrym]

Hello everyone,

I have this little problem... Tropico 4 just won't launch. When I click on the game, nothing happens. Nothing on the task bar, if I open the task manager I can see Tropico4.exe (or whatever the name is, I don't even have time to read it before it disapears) briefly appear and disappear in the process list. No error whatsoever.

I don't even get to the launcher. I tried bypassing the launcher with someone's tip by blocking through the host file, but it didn't change anything.

I already did everything I could. Reinstalling drivers, uninstalling Stereoscopic drivers, reinstalling DX_Setup, installing the .Net stuff included in the folder, unchecking the Steam community option, checking game cache... %appdata% doesn't even have a Tropico 4 folder since I never got to the game.

I'm running out of options here and I'm really getting frustrated. Can anyone lend me a hand?

[ThereIs0nly0ne]

Do you have Afterburner or VGA precision or suchlike running in the background. This happens to me with some games when I have those running.

[Myzzrym]

Hey there thanks your message. I checked again and no, Afterburner was not active when I tried to launch. Active or inactive the problem is the same, nothing ever comes out. I don't have other similar software active when trying to play Tropico 4.

Problem still here :/

[Poem Of Ecstasy]

Hey I am having the exact same problem as you. The thing is the game worked fine once. I downloaded it, installed, loaded the game, and played for a few hours. Then I closed things down to go eat dinner. When I came back, the game refused to work. The same thing is happening with me. No launcher at all, no error... I even get the steam ad pop-up after the exe just auto-closes. I do see it on the task manager for a few seconds. I have tried everything to fix it, even things from the actual support page, and nothing has helped. I can't even make a crash log or anything since no crash seems to happen. I did spot your thread on the support page and tried every suggestion there, and nothing helped. Since this is steam and my likelyhood of getting a refund is nill, I am growing frustrated. I only got to play the game once before it stopped working!

EDIT:

I tried something totally out of the ballpark. I set the game's compatibility to windows XP service pack 2. Somehow this worked, and my achievements are even showing up properly now. What a stupid and confusing solution, but it worked.

[MikeH]

What are the system spec's? I see lots of people with laptops having this issue. The game don't like laptops from what I can tell.

[Myzzrym]

After trying every solutions I could find, I still haven't had any luck launching the game. I'm playing on a desktop with 8GB RAM, i7-2600 3.40GHz CPU and GTX 570 GPU. No luck with XP service Pack 2 trick either...

[MikeH]

Well, sounds like you covered most of your bases. tried all compatibility modes like vista/xp and such.

No tropico 4 in your app data folder.

so, There is something messing with the launcher. I know mumble gave users the same problem, and something called Iminent conflicts with it starting. You enabled and disabled communities.

So, all video drivers and what not updated? You don't have any extra codec's that were installed to run video's or old games? Old games are horrible at just overwriting stuff they don't need to.

You tried a different desktop res like 1024x768? tried to start it in safe mode through short cut?
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Tropico 4\Tropico4.exe" /safe

tried running it in 640x840 and disable all the themes in that short cut? with run as admin. If it at least loads in this res then you know the issue. This res won't allow you to log in though.

Nothing else running? firewalls windows/other lots of antivirus programs also stop this. did Ctrl+_ALT+DEL and shut down every process running short of killing off windows?

Deleted the game, reg keys and did a fresh install. Some reported this worked as it got corrupted somehow. do a steam verify check first though to see if it found something then reinstall.

There is no reason it should not run, but I suspect possible screen res issue. This seems to be the most common problem. A codec from another game/pack can cause this also.

Look again and report back. I hope you get your game running soon. Your missing out on being El Presidente.

Mike.

[SSoTS]

Same problem here, i tried everything posted in every forum:
Disable comunity overlay, start, restart, reinstall stuff, compatibility mode...

None of the prev solutions works for me, the launcher does not popup NEVER!

I had mailed Kalypso with no hope for solution...

Valve, FYI, i feel ripped off!!

[Myzzrym]

Hey there just to give a quick follow up on the matter. Tropico 4 still doesn't work for me on my main desktop, but I can play it just fine on my laptop. I already went to Kalypso's forum and try to get help here, but no one could figure out why it didn't work or how to make it work :/

Not really sure what the hell is happening there.

[Jᴧgᴧ]

Not running for me either. Tried all the suggested fixes in this and other topics. W7x64 with current .net3.5.1. Getting a Critical Error box with a button that pops up over the desktop with "failed to initialize video mode". I'm using two Radeon 6870's and have tried Crossfire both on and off now.

Am using the Steam Beta to try and resolve errors from yet *another* game that won't run, M&M Dark Messiah.

Wasn't too bothered by one game not running, but now it's two. Starting to get irritating, Valve.

[Jᴧgᴧ]

Update to my prior post: I was able to work around this issue, here are the details of how to fix it for non-standard resolutions:

It refuses to launch and will throw an error message if it can't create a DX window for the game in one of the three following resolutions: 1024x768, 1280x720, 1280x800. Your monitor MUST be in one of these resolutions (or support it in normal landscape mode) for the game to launch correctly.

In my case, I have an eyefinity setup of three portrait 1920x1080 monitors. My native resolution was 3240x1920, which the game just didn't know how to handle. What I did was 1) Disable the eyefinity group, and 2) rotate all the displays back to landscape. I then launched the game and changed it from a specific resolution to "Windowed" resolution (at the top of the resolution list). That will get the game to launch in any display config, no matter what.

After that, I re-rotated back to portrait, and re-enabled eyefinity to get my standard resolution and orientations back. Then I could launch the game, go to the resolution setting, and choose *ANY* resolution the video driver claimed was supported (up to and including 3240x1920). Tropico 4 is now happily running on a huge triple-portrait setup.

The key is giving the game a default resolution to run in one time, then flipping it to run in windowed mode and exiting so it saves the setting. After that you can pick whatever res you want and it won't complain.

[SSoTS]

Thanks Jaga, but i thing that is not my problem.

Nothing happens when i change my monitor resolution to 1024x768 or 1280x720. When i press Play button, my bottom little image turns green for 2 seconds, then blue again, and nothing, neither a popup, error window or a launcher :(

It is unbelievable that neither Valve or Kalypso takes responsibility for this issue...

[Hemet Nesingwary]

Same business here but on Win8 X64. Nothing seems to work. If I try to launch it manually as administrator it says that DX9 isn't installed, obviously I have DX11 installed. The mistake on my box must be that the DX9 installer that usually runs before every game's first launch isn't working for this game.

[Hemet Nesingwary]

My solution turned out to be to use this DX9 updater made expressly for this purpose to install optional files older games need that don't come with DX11/11.1/11.2 on Win7/8/8.1. :D
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

[StaffanP]

Originally posted by Gregantuan:

My solution turned out to be to use this DX9 updater made expressly for this purpose to install optional files older games need that don't come with DX11/11.1/11.2 on Win7/8/8.1. :D
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

Excellent! This solved my problem with launching the game! Thanks!

[Hemet Nesingwary]

Sweet bananas!