Crash on start, or does not start

[Growly]

The game doesn't start for me. It crashes shortly after launch. Event Viewer shows an application crash every time.

I've had this problem on two different Windows 10 installations, with possibly the only things in common between them being my video card (EVGA GTX 1080 Ti) and my Steam account.

I have three monitors plugged in, and after reading somewhere that this may be a problem I've disabled two of them in Windows (but they're still plugged in).

I also had to add Steam to the system PATH in order to avoid the "Steam not found" error.

I tried changing the compatibility mode of both "GeometryWars.exe" and "testapp.exe" but no combination of settings seems to work - certainly none of the ones I've found others claiming to.

Any ideas? Or is this a lost cause? I miss this game :(

[Χάρης]

It seems like you are playing so I guess you fixed it? How did you get the in-game overlay to work? I can run the game in compatibility mode but it plays without the steam overlay.

[Growly]

I did not fix it. I put together an old pc for it to work 😢

[Χάρης]

Originally posted by Growly:

I did not fix it. I put together an old pc for it to work 😢

Oh dang. I actually thought of doing this for some of my old games. I assume you got it running on Windows XP?

[bdero]

If you have a CPU with a high core count (like many AMD Ryzen processors), try overriding the CPU affinity bitmask when launching GeometryWars.exe to hide some of the cores as described in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/8400/discussions/0/1643170269579142666/

[hngryhppz]

I can confirm that bdero's solution works. I have a Ryzen 5950X (16 cores), and an affinity of FF works perfectly for me (after copying Steam.dll into the Geometry Wars directory as directed).

Big thanks, bdero! Last played this gem seven years ago and have been missing it for a while now.

[ray18200518]

can someone help me get this game to start on my pc please ?

[Woods]

Not working for me either, gutted :(

[Gwont]

Did your previous pc have an x3d AMD cpu by chance? Might sound out of the blue, especially because this post is old now, but I have a theory that this game wont work with 3d v cache.