Prevent Crashes And Fix FPS In Saints Row 2 (2024 Update)

My original guide from 2017 became obsolete and some of the fixes in that version were no longer helping make the game stable. Things like Compatibility Mode no longer work. I've tested these fixes extensively on Windows 10 (single player) and overhauled the guide for 2024. Thanks to software like Steamless, NTCore 4GB Patch, DXVK and IdolNinja's GotR Mod, Saints Row 2 runs the best it's ever run on PC.

I know this looks like a lot of work, but it really doesn't take very long and it's quite simple to do. Saints Row 2 is definitely worth the effort and then some!

Step 1: Steamless

In order to make SR2 run more stably and maximize FPS, we'll need to install DXVK, but the SR2 executable has SteamStub DRM which breaks DXVK. A utility called Steamless will remove the DRM, allowing DXVK to work.

1. Download and extract Steamless[github.com] into any directory.

2. Open Steamless.exe. Click the three dots in the top right corner and browse to SR2_pc.exe. Keep the plugin selection on automatic. Click the Unpack File button.

3. When it says "complete", close Steamless. Go back to your SR2 installation directory (the one with SR2_pc.exe). You will see a new file titled SR2_pc.exe.unpacked.exe.

4. Rename your original SR2_pc.exe to SR2_pc.OLD.exe and rename SR2_pc.exe.unpacked.exe to SR2_pc.exe.

Step 2: NTCore 4GB Patch

The SR2_pc executable does not support large memory addresses and only supports up to 2GB. DXVK will cause SR2 to crash almost instantly after the loading screen without large address support due to the executable going over the 2GB threshold.

1. Download and extract 4GB Patch[ntcore.com] to any location.

2. Run 4gb_patch.exe. Browse to the new SR2_pc.exe file that you got after using Steamless. Click Open.

3. A confirmation message will be displayed stating that the executable has been patched. Close the 4GB patcher.

PRO TIP: At this point, after you've used Steamless and the 4GB patch on SR2_pc.exe, save the exe file someplace where you'll always have quick access to it (like Google Drive). That way, whenever you reinstall Saints Row 2, you can skip the first two steps of this guide and simply replace the stock Steam exe file.

Step 3: DXVK

DXVK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine, but DXVK can help legacy DirectX games on Windows run more efficiently and stably.

1. Download and extract DXVK[github.com] to any location.

2. Once you have extracted the .gz and .tar archives, navigate to the x32 folder and copy the d3d9.dll and dxgi.dll files to your SR2 installation directory, overwriting any files of the same names.

Step 4: "Gentlemen of the Row" mod

Some say that with the previous fixes applied that the Gentlemen of the Row mod isn't needed but I respectfully disagree. You can play SR2 without Gentlemen of the Row, but it includes 150+ bug fixes, so you'll be dealing with a lot more bugs without it. It will also give you access to a bunch of fun optional mods as well as brighten the dull color pallet somewhat.

• Google "Gentlemen of the Row v1.9.2" and download the .rar archive.
  
  
• Extract the contents and simply follow the steps in the "1-README INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS.txt" file. For your convenience, I have copy and pasted those basic installation instructions below:

Gentlemen of the Row v1.9 by Mike Watson AKA IdolNinja (RIP) - Install Instructions

-----------------------------------------------------------

STEP 1. Double click Create_Custom_Gotr_v1.9.2.bat

STEP 2. Select your mods to install from the list by typing in the number and pressing Enter. Doing so will add an 'I' to the mod to let you know you've selected it for install. Selecting the mod again will toggle the selection off. Some of the choices have submenus with many additional options like the Gang Types and Character Customization.

* NOTE: If you simply want the Standard KBAM build of Gentlemen of the Row v1.9, just select P at the menu to build the patch. It will include almost EVERYTHING you've come to expect in the old prebuilt versions.

STEP 3. When you are satisified that all your desired mods have been selected, press P to build your new patch file. This will create a new patch.vpp_pc, preload.tbl, and preload_anim.tbl file for you in the MY_CUSTOM_PATCH folder.

STEP 4. Manually move these 3 new files to your SR2 install directory (where sr2_pc.exe resides) and replace the existing ones. You can usually find this directory wherever you installed Steam: ..\steam\steamapps\common\saints row 2\

NOTE: Changing mods around via the menu will not break your save files. You can safely experiment and rebuild often with the same character to try out new things.

**REGARDING CO-OP**
If you are planning to play in Co-op, then both players need the "Gentlemen of the Row" mod installed. Otherwise, the game will crash.

Step 5: Cap The Framerate

SR2 is the most stable running at no more than 60 FPS. There are many programs that can cap your framerate suchas Nvidia Inspector, but I prefer RivaTuner[www.guru3d.com].

1. After downloading and installing RivaTuner run it and click the green Add button. Browse to SR2_pc.exe and click OK.

2. With SR2_pc.exe selected on the left pane, click in the Framerate Limit field, type 60, and hit Enter. NOTE: This is a starting point because having Dynamic Lighting set to "All" in the graphics settings will tank your framerate...more on that later.

3. Enable the "Start With Windows" option at the top.

Step 6: Configure "Borderless Windowed" mode

SR2 seems to run more stably in Borderless Windowed Mode (plus you can Alt + Tab out of the game without risking a lockup) but the game doesn't have that mode by default. There are a number of third party apps you can download for that, I prefer Borderless Gaming[github.com].

1. After downloading and installing Borderless Gaming, run it, start SR2 and then Alt + Tab out of the game.

2. In the Borderless Gaming app, select Saints Row 2 from the Applications pane on the left, click on the option to make it borderless, and then click the top arrow to add it to your favorites.

3. Minimize Borderless Gaming. I would also recommend selecting "Run on Startup" from the Options Menu.

Step 7: Test The Dynamic Lighting Setting

Having Dynamic Lighting set to "All" in the graphics settings will tank your framerate and cause frequent drops, especially while driving at night (the more car headlights, the more framerate drops). This is a problem on powerful GPUs as well. At the time of this writing I'm running a 2070 Super, which is rather weak by today's standards, but it should have more than enough power to run SR2 with everything maxed. I've read comments from people with current gen high-end cards that also have the same problem. That's just how poorly optimized this port is...but if you have an ultra high-end GPU then it may be powerful enough to keep it at the 60 FPS cap we set. So, that's why I say to test the setting to compare the framerate with Dynamic Lighting enabled vs disabled. BTW "Simple" Dynamic Lighting looks nearly as bad as none at all. If your rig is so good that you don't get drops below 60 FPS then you can leave it set to "All".

When you see videos on Youtube of SR2 running at 60 FPS, locked with no drops or stuttering, it's during the day in the game. The framerate drops for me only happen at night when the headlights and street lights come on or in interiors around bright lights. You can actually see in real-time how passing cars at night drops the framerate.

My framerate was dropping into the 40s (occasionally into the mid 30s) so I found that capping the framerate at 45 in RivaTuner more or less solved that. Unfortunately, it's not quite as smooth as 60 FPS, but it's better than 30 (although even 30 is perfectly playable in this game) and the FPS stuttering is nearly gone entirely. So, experiment with your framerate cap and set it as high as you can without getting framerate stutter.

Your other option is to turn Dynamic Lighting to "Simple" or "None", but the game looks absolutely terrible like that. Interiors will lack detail and look one-dimensional. Car headlights will have no depth and will not illuminate. Lights in general will not illuminate anything.

Other Graphics Settings:

I should note that I also have Motion Blur, HDR, and Depth of Field turned off, but not for performance reasons, just personal preference. V-Sync is off for stability reasons. I have Full Screen turned on because it ironically seems to work better with third party borderless window apps. I have all other settings maxed and have tested them all. The only one that tanks the framerate for me is Dynamic Lighting, and I've read many comments over the years saying the same.

Step 8: Fixing out-of-sync cut-scenes

If you experience syncing issues in the cut-scenes, like a cell phone or gun floating in the air or NPCs walking through walls, then you can cap the framerate at 30 FPS to fix that. Just use RivaTuner (or your preferred app) that we configured earlier and lower it to 30. As far as I know, it's just distracting and not game-breaking, so you need to decide if capping at 30 FPS is worth it.

Alternate Method:

This method works for nVidia cards but I'm not sure about others. In nVidia Control Panel (or similar for other GPU brands) under Manage 3D settings > Program Settings browse to and add SR2_pc.exe. Once added, go to the V-Sync option and select "On" from the drop down menu (be sure to apply your changes). NOTE: V-Sync should be off in the game's graphics settings.

Expect The Occasional Crash

That's right, even after ALL that, the game will probably randomly crash in spots. It shouldn't happen enough to make it so that you can't finish the game, but expect that it will happen at some point. Unfortunately, since this is such a janky port to begin with, there is no way to make it rock-solid stable at all times.

SAVE OFTEN! Save manually in a new slot after every mission so the previous save is accessible in the event that the current save file gets corrupted.

All that work downloading, installing, and configuring wasn't for nothing though...your game will run smoother and the frequency of any crashes will be lessened dramatically.

FAQ

The creator of Gentlemen of the Row (RIP Mike Watson AKA IdolNinja), Saints Row super-modder and the senior community developer leading the Saints Row 2 patch project at Volition, created a FAQ back in 2011. The following are the most frequently asked questions so far, pulled straight from his original post.

Q: Why is my game crashing when I try to load a save?

A: Crashing on save load is an indication of save corruption, or as a result adding or removing mods. The best way to avoid this is to save manually in a new slot after every mission so you can go back to a previous save in the event that it corrupts. This is important to do even with the original vanilla game. Also, be careful if you use any mods since saves are usually not compatible if you change/remove them.

Q: How do I fix the menu selection auto-scrolling through the options at fast speed?

A: Saints Row 2 has this issue with certain USB devices which it mistakenly thinks are game controllers. The first thing to try is to unplug all USB devices except your keyboard and mouse and see if that fixes it. Also, certain Saitek keyboards install their own HID-Compliant Game Controller entry in Device Manager to enable extra functionality like keystroke macros. Temporarily disabling this device in device manager could also fix the issue.

Q: The "Gentlemen of the Row" mod prevents me from picking an Eye Color when I'm customizing my character, saying that the option is "UNAVAILABLE." Is there anything that can be done about that?

A: Eye color is now purchasable at the better stores; Impressions, Branded, and Let's Pretend. You now have the entire clothing color palette (150+ colors) to choose from instead of the 8 or so from vanilla. You can also color both the iris and now sclera individually.

The eyes being all brown at the surgeon is merely a side effect of them now being a clothing item. Attempting to remove the eye color menu from the surgeon caused all sorts of formatting problems, so labeling it as unavailable was the best compromise I could come up with.

Q: Why does the game stutter while driving and what can I do to minimize it?

NOTE: This is mostly relevant if the game is installed on an HDD. SSD drives won't see much benefit from this.

A: The biggest issue with the PC port of Saints Row 2 is how the engine streams data from the hard drive into memory and how it prefetches (or more correctly, doesn't.)

The prefetching is the thing that tends to throw everyone because it can adversely affect people with optimal hardware that should be able to run the game well. So, you start seeing wild rumors flying around from everyone on what hardware can and can't run it well, as if it's a crapshoot. It's not, and I'll get to some ways to fix that lag in after I go over basic hardware requirements.

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:

These are some minimum requirements to get ~30fps with 1920x1200 and most everything maxed with some dips to maybe 25fps during really fast driving:
Core 2 Duo 3Ghz
ATI 4850 w/512 video memory
3GB RAM with Windows 7 (4GB RAM under Vista)
7200rpm hard drive with <4ms seek

OS:

XP will never run the game well because it can't prefetch. Vista runs it okay and you won't have to worry about speedup issues. Windows 7 performance is the best.

The biggest thing you can do to help SR2 performance is to give it as much RAM as you can. We're talking at least 2.5Gb free memory not being prefetched by other applications.

WINDOWS PREFETCHING BASICS:

The way Windows prefetching works is that Windows continually gathers data about your usage as you use your PC, and is constantly swapping applications in and out of memory trying to predict (or prefetch) the apps that it thinks you might need, before you even use them. That way they are already in memory and load instantly instead of loading them off the hard drive which is much slower.

Any app or game that you run should result in Windows giving that app all the memory it needs. So, it should (and does) unload other things it had prefetched, and give the new app all the memory it needs. This is the way every app normally works except SR2. For some reason with SR2, the OS will not give up any of the prefetched memory in use by other apps. SR2 will also sometimes fail to even create a .pf file and not prefetch at all if the memory is full.

STEPS TO MINIMIZE/ELIMINATE DRIVING LAG:

* Delete the contents of c:\windows\prefetch\
This will remove all the .pf files for all apps that Windows has learned and created over time. By doing so, Windows will no longer prefetch them into memory until it relearns that behavior.
* Reboot
* Make sure you have all other unnecessary applications and processes closed/ended like web browsers, background tasks, etc.
* Run Saints Row 2 and check the prefetch folder to make sure Windows created SR2_PC.EXE[SOME#s].pf

The above fix should not work that way, yet somehow does. This has worked for hundreds of players I have helped. I can't even begin to fathom how the developers found a way to get Windows to ignore its standard prefetching, but I guess there's a reason that this game has a reputation for being the worst port in the history of gaming.

NOTE: After clearing the contents of prefetch, the first few times Windows boots or loads a new app, it may initially load slightly slower until it relearns and starts prefetching. Most people don't even notice it though with high end hardware like recommended earlier.

Slightly lower hardware than the specs mentioned earlier are probably workable. It just means you'll have to run it at a lower resolution and maybe turn down some graphic settings like Motion Blur, AA, or Dynamic Lighting.

BONUS - High Quality Radio Mod + More (Optional)

While not related to stability or FPS, I'm including this section because these changes improve the overall player experience.

High Quality Radio Mod:

The PC port of Saints Row 2 has a very poorly compressed audio with quality of 22050 Hz mono. This mod replaces the PC sound banks with the Xbox 360 version, converted in 32000-44100 Hz stereo.

Download:

High Quality Radio Mod[www.saintsrowmods.com]

Installation:

1. Copy and paste music1.vpp_pc and music2.vpp_pc into the game folder where SR2_pc.exe resides, overwriting the original files.

Skip Intro Videos:

1. Go to <path-to-game>\Videos

2. Move, delete or rename logo_thq_hd.bik and logo_volition_hd.bik.

Conclusion

I hope this guide has helped better the performance of Saints Row 2 on your PC. It really is a shame it's such a poor port, and I hope some day that it will be properly fixed. If this guide has helped, please like and favorite it so that I know whether or not to keep making these kind of guides. Also, feel free to leave any questions, comments, or suggestions in the comments.

[Dio]

now it crashes on start after REINSTALLING THE GAME

[Dio]

my friend followed all the steps like I did now hes getting a application load error

[Dio]

I start driving into a specfic area and it crashes

[Stonez]

Just want to drop by and say thanks for the radio mod. You can really taste that sweet audio compression in this game lol.

[☽⋆˖Nigh☥breed˖⋆☾]

@GrandpaPhantom - did you complete every step of this guide?

[GrandpaPhantom]

I keep getting CTD for some cutscenes and in the save shaundi mission for the semdi when you try going down into your crib.
It's been making the game unfinisheable

[☽⋆˖Nigh☥breed˖⋆☾]

I only play single player, so I don't know if this fixes anything in coop. I'd definitely try it if I were you.

[Down INTERDIMENSIONALLY]

do any of these modifications allow for coop to function properly ? last time i tried to play with a friend we kept crashing/disconnecting

[☽⋆˖Nigh☥breed˖⋆☾]

@SixelAlexiS - Thanks, I'm glad you like the new guide! The GOG version is actually playable as it is whereas the Steam version isn't. From what I can tell, GOG took it upon themselves to do some similar things that I mention here. For example, they removed the 2GB limit in the exe, so there's no need to patch the GOG exe (and it doesn't have DRM like SteamStub that breaks DXVK). That alone will lessen the crashes a lot. They also cap the framerate at 30 FPS in their exe along with an nVidia Inspector profile, making it more stable than the vanilla Steam version. Those are the differences as far as I know. The only thing I'd do to the GOG version is install DXVK and GotR. I'd probably also remove the 30 FPS cap (there's a free utility for that) and set my own framerate cap. Hope that helps!

[SixelAlexiS]

Hi Nighbreed, just found out this guide, great stuff!
Would you mind telling me the difference between the Steam and GOG version tho?
I've read discordant opinions online, who say that the GOG version is much better while others say they are basically the same.
I'm really curious about it and would be helpful having a more expert take on this, thanks :)