Assetto Corsa no longer boots

[bblock383]

As the name say, the game no longer starts. I have tried everything to get the game to run but cant seem to fix it. So story is this, I built a new PC in April of this year, worked great, runs everything I play in 4k maxed out settings. I purchased Assetto around summer under a Steam sale and it played great and I love the game, worth every penny. I had 200 gigs of cars added to the game as well as the shader mod and all that. So I stopped playing for a while since I have other games to play and the interesting modded cars was slow to release.

Anyway so about a month ago I tried booting up Skyrim which had always worked perfect to find out that now the game wont run out of no where. Steam has a history of having games not boot, so I tried Assetto and now all of a sudden it too doesnt work. They exhibit the exact same symptoms and so far none of my other games are suffering from this. Obviously, this leads me to believe they have something in common that makes them run correctly but I have no clue what it is. I have noticed 1 thing, they both use launchers to start the game and if I use Content Manager the game boots but goes straight to a race and no going to the main menu or anything. So if I bypass the launcher Im fine but if I try to boot it normally it simply wont happen.

OK so what its doing (or not doing), when I go into to Steam to start the game it brings up the small window briefly of "Preparing to run" or whatever. Then goes away and the cursor starts spinning like youd expect but after a few seconds it stops and then nothing happens. AC has always had a little delay in it before it actually booted but this time it never does. If I go into Task Manager most of the time Ill find it but sometimes it wont be there but Steam says its running, other half it shows up as a background process (same with Skyrim) and just sits there forever. Its not crashing or "Not Responding" nothing. Just acting like everythings fine like a normal background process. No Cpu usage, barely any ram being used. Thats it. I have no idea whats happening or what happened to it in the first place. Interestingly, Content Manager will allow me to race but it doesnt appear to let me go to the main menu or anything. No option once ingame to do so. Im stumped.

So to get it out of the way heres what Ive done to try and fix it:

Completely uninstalled the game and all related files and folders and reinstalled.

Validated files through Steam.

Updated EVERY driver.

Updated Windows.

Uninstalled graphics drivers with DDU and installed multiple versions from past to present.

Completely wiped hard drive clean. No files, nothing, as if it was a new drive and installed the same version of Windows 10 I had when I built the PC in April when it worked fine.

Same as above with all other drivers.

Tried with non updated software of any kind. Just fresh install of Windows and whatever drivers and software it came with and went right to Steam to download these 2 games.

Ive tried disabling my GPU and using my Igpu. Made no difference.

Updated all software to most recent versions.

Tried Steam offline.

Here also is my setup since I know that will get asked too:

Asrock Taichi Ultimate Z390

Intel 8700k stock

Gigabyte Rtx 2080 stock

16gb of DDR4 G.Skill Trident ram

Seasonic Focus Plus 650 Gold powersupply

EVGA AIO

Samsung 970 Evo PLUS 500gb NVME

Think thats it. Obviously if I left something out Ill add it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Alex Townsend]

When you reinstall do you put everything back in?
Have you tried fresh install of AC without any mods?
It's odd that it's only happening with 2 titles in your library. Does Skyrim also have mods?

 

[bblock383]

When you reinstall do you put everything back in?
Have you tried fresh install of AC without any mods?
It's odd that it's only happening with 2 titles in your library. Does Skyrim also have mods?

After what happened I haven't put any mods in AC just been running it stock. Same with Skyrim, it has no mods either. Both vanilla. I agree its odd its just those 2 but only thing I can figure is they both use launchers. There doesn't appear to be a way to bypass the Steam launcher for Skyrim like I can use Content Manager for AC but Id bet a large sum of money that Skyrim would boot without that launcher in the way just like AC which would confirm my theory. Whatever the connection is, they both need the same thing to run but I have no way of finding that out.

 

[Alex Townsend]

I wonder if an uninstall and reinstall of Steam would help?
Maybe something has become corrupted... no idea really. Guess the next thing, if not already attempted, would be Steam support

 

[Gevatter]

Completely uninstalled the game and all related files and folders and reinstalled.

Just to be sure, does that include the Assetto Corsa folder in Documents?
What happens if you start the game directly via the assettocorsa.exe?

 

[Vintagedriver01]

First get all the mods out off AC even Simhub or CM, could be a mod that’s corrupted or conflicting.
Read this https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/game-loading-problem.170502/#post-3001867
Normally in my case, its is solved by deleting the .cfg file in the documents/AC folders (not in the programs86/steam folder) or the need of an integrity check by Steam.

 

[Jempy]

Very important question of @Gevatter .... the problem might be ( as it often happens ) in the Documents/Assetto Corsa.
If not already tried .... save them under an other folder name or move them somewhere on your PC and start AC and it will create a new documents/assetto corsa folder ...
If the problem was there, it will start and you'll be able to copy ( rather than move ) some saved files from your backup into the new documents..... First only controllers to test if the game is running perfectly.

And are you sure your antivirus is not deleting or quarantining an important file .... for false suspected Trojan detection ?

 

[Mike Kadlcak]

try new profile in windows so you have an empty documents/assetto corsa folder.
try to run steam with admin rights.

 

[bblock383]

I wonder if an uninstall and reinstall of Steam would help?
Maybe something has become corrupted... no idea really. Guess the next thing, if not already attempted, would be Steam support

I tried that. Infact I went farther than that as I stated in my first post by wiping the whole drive and starting over. I had hoped it was that simple but no unfortunately.

 

[bblock383]

Just to be sure, does that include the Assetto Corsa folder in Documents?
What happens if you start the game directly via the assettocorsa.exe?

Yes it does. Ive manually removed everything related to AC. Didn't help. Something someone else said in another forum was he found it odd my system doesn't create a rendererinfo.txt. My AMD laptop has one but not my main PC. I have no idea if it was there when the game worked or not, but I have manually created one and it seemed to make no difference.

Starting the game directly from the .exe results in exactly the symptoms I mentioned in my first post.
I assume then that Steam is using that .exe to run the game which is the launcher for the game. It simply does nothing. Acts like it will but then just does nothing and sits in the background doing nothing if you look at the Task Manager. Sometimes it doesn't show up at all.

 

[bblock383]

First get all the mods out off AC even Simhub or CM, could be a mod that’s corrupted or conflicting.
Read this https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/game-loading-problem.170502/#post-3001867
Normally in my case, its is solved by deleting the .cfg file in the documents/AC folders (not in the programs86/steam folder) or the need of an integrity check by Steam.

Never had issues with mods. Only had shader mod installed I believe and it worked fine. Had TONS of cars but none ever caused an issue. To answer your question though, yes I deleted everything I had for AC including all folders, and related file started over. Tried the integrity check many, many times and everyonce in a while it will find something to replace although I have no idea what they are. Ive had it replace files right after a fresh install or after my first attempt to boot the game. Never just 1 file though, usually 2 or more. In connection with that, yes I have also been over the antivirus program to see if that's the issue and that came up with nothing either. I just use Windows security so nothing like AVG or any other ones that are known to cause issues with this game. I went through the app anyway and only a few things were missing but adding them made no difference.

 

[bblock383]

Very important question of @Gevatter .... the problem might be ( as it often happens ) in the Documents/Assetto Corsa.
If not already tried .... save them under an other folder name or move them somewhere on your PC and start AC and it will create a new documents/assetto corsa folder ...
If the problem was there, it will start and you'll be able to copy ( rather than move ) some saved files from your backup into the new documents..... First only controllers to test if the game is running perfectly.

And are you sure your antivirus is not deleting or quarantining an important file .... for false suspected Trojan detection ?

The AC folder in Documents has had no affect on anything. I started by renaming and moving, then just deleting it altogether. I also tried putting the folder from my AMD laptop in as it runs fine on that machine just incase something wasn't there that needed to be and that made no difference either.

Also have tried booting the game with and without my wheel. That also didn't help.

Antivirus as I mentioned in another post doesn't seem to be affecting anything. Ive been through the program and adding things that weren't already there but I didn't help. None of my files are missing and if they were Id assume I would get an error of some kind but it never gives me and error and it never crashes, just never boots, almost like its going to sleep in the background.

 

[bblock383]

try new profile in windows so you have an empty documents/assetto corsa folder.
try to run steam with admin rights.

Tried that as well. Steam doesn't seem to like being run that way as it gives me a warning about it but either way it doesn't help with the game. Ive already in the same vain tried doing that with the .exe files in the AC folder. That didn't help either just like it doesn't really help the 2 Skyrim files either.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Sounds like you've covered practically everything... I'd see if Steam support can help if you haven't already?

 

[bblock383]

Sounds like you've covered practically everything... I'd see if Steam support can help if you haven't already?

Steam hasn't been a lot of help with this. I haven't had an easy time finding a way to get in contact with them and what I have found is that they want to push this off onto Kunos on the grounds that its a 3rd party game not made by Steam or Valve. I have tried in turn getting a hold of Kunos but they don't seem to want to answer messages and posting on their forum is impossible it seems. I seem cut off of any way to fix these issues.i

 

[aphidgod]

Have you tried reinstalling it? Some steam games detect a major hardware change as being a new PC and you have to do that to get them running again. Happened to me with AC recently when I upgraded to a Zen 2 setup.

 

[Vintagedriver01]

Please Publish the ACLogfile. documents/assetto corsa/logs or something similar.

Edit and check this, https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?forums/troubleshooting-workarounds.20/

 

[bblock383]

Vintagedriver01- Your wanting the Log.txt? or Launcher.log? Log.txt is extremely long. Ill put it up happily but theres A LOT to go through.

Already went through the workarounds. No one has the same issue as me. Also for some reason the site wont let me post anything so I cant ask questions but seems to be pretty dead in that particular forum and a lot of peoples questions just simply go unanswered. I signed up for it and all but it tells me I don't have the rights to post anything nor reply to anything. I got accepted by the Admin to the sight but cant ask questions. IDK.

 

[Mike Kadlcak]

You could upload it to pastebin dot com for example so AC support can check and guys over here.

 

[bblock383]

OK just for anyone else who may run around this issue in the future Ill update this thread and give you the solution to this problem. Skip down to the "Conclusion" at the bottom if you are just interested in the answer and arent interested in how I figured all this out. Thanks to all who replied.

So after a lot of messing around with things and thinking about other things that could be installing themselves and keeping this issue present everytime I wiped the drive and started over, I didnt install anything at all and let Windows install whatever drivers it had and went with that. Once the setup was done, the first thing I did was install Steam and Skyrim (the issue is tied directly to AC and Skyrim was only like 7gb as opposed to AC which is around 40gb so it downloaded much faster.) After booting up Skyrim and giving it a shot lo and behold it was fixed some how. Had no idea what happened at all and honestly I didnt care at the time I was just happy to have my games back. Of course after this I downloaded AC and tried it and yes it too worked all of a sudden.

After a while of having everything back I started installing all of my drivers and misc software and updates and reboots for said updates.Not everything just some. After all was said and done I went back to that game and it was busted again! Exact same symptoms for both games. So I thought about and I knew I hadnt done much so I decided I would completely uninstall the games and all files they had, totally remove Steam (all with Revo uninstaller) rebooted my Pc and tried to do everything the exact same way I did went I got it working. Once I rebooted I reversed all that and the games worked again. I was rather puzzled by this obviously and started trying to narrow this down.

I noticed something I did differently this time I hadnt done the previous times I wiped and started over which was that went Windows setup is trying to do things like add your account and what not it wants to connect to the internet to do so but connects through WIFI, not Ethernet. Once setup was done and I got to the desktop I did NOTHING except get Steam and the games and tried them and of course they worked. So when I rebooted after uninstalling Steam and the games with Revo, I also switched back to WIFI to download the games. Games worked again. My Aquantia Ethernet is not seen by Windows automatically so a driver must be installed to use it which I did install it after I got the games working the first time.

So after downloading the games off Wifi and getting them working again I switched back to my Aquantia and tried the games and they worked fine. Again I was puzzled by this, but for some reason the games didnt like being downloaded through Ethernet so if I ever uninstalled the games again I would have to redownload them using Wifi or they wouldnt work. Didnt make sense to me at the time but I was just happy I could make them work even if I had to do something special for it. So I update my PC and go through the reboots and all that and once done I wondered if the games still worked after installing everything. So I tried them again and they stopped working. This time it could be anything since I was finishing off get my PC the way I want it. However, I decided to stick with this "Internet issue" and decided to do some tests. This time without uninstalling the games, I tried launching the games with Aquantia (which didnt work) and then right after, switching to Wifi. As soon as Wifi was enabled I tried again and it worked. I had finally narrowed down the issue to this.

Interestingly enough, I found out that once Steam had launched the games once on Wifi, I could switch back to Aquantia and have no problem with it until reboot. After reboot they wouldnt work until I launched them again 1 time on Wifi and then I could switch to Aquantia for the rest of my time on that reboot. Something was resetting within Steam everything I rebooted it seemed. So of course I blamed Steam for the issue. But I keep thinking back to the first few months I had this PC and everything worked fine and I didnt have this issue with my Aquantia Ethernet. Something had to have changed. Situation didnt make sense until I thought back to a few months ago. I was searching around the web for updated drivers for my Aquantia since Intel had no more updates for it. Found the official site of the company that makes the Aquantia Ethernet for Motherboards(mine being an ASROCK TaiChi Ultimate) and found the drivers on their site after some searching and they were indeed newer. So I of course downloaded and installed them on my PC. Being none the wiser I thought things were fine as my games still worked after installing them. I dont use my PC every day, sometimes Ill go several days without using it, so after I was done using it I did as I always do and shut it down.

Also sometimes I may go several uses of my PC without playing either Skyrim or AC. Mostly Ill get on to check for new cars and content and depending on what I found and how excited it makes me Ill either go right into playing AC or Ill wait until better stuff comes out. So during the summer a "dry spell" of cars happened where ya some cars were released but nothing that was enough to make me boot AC however I downloaded the ones I had some interest in and after awhile shut the PC down again for a few days.
I did this for a while, enough to where a month or so went by and as I said, I was none the wiser that my games were broke the whole time. So as Im sure you can guess, once I did want to boot them I found them broke and it seemed random and out of the blue and for no reason at all. The rest of course you all know which brought me here and elsewhere to find help.

In conclusion for the people that dont want to read all that and just want the answer, the answer is dont use Aquantia drivers directly from the manufacturer of Aquantia. Get them from Intel. This is why my PC worked perfect for 4 or 5 months and then seemed to break out of no where. I used Intel Aquantia drivers and so of course making sure to use Revo again, I uninstalled the drivers I had and went back to the Intel ones and its not totally fixed and now I am permanently connect to my Aquantia Ethernet and the games now boot as normal everytime.

(As a side note, Im still very curious why Steam didnt like those drivers and why it needed Wifi to connect just that 1 time and then everything worked as normal until reboot where the process had to start over. It seems like for some reason with those two games (also RaceRoom evidently was affected however it would boot eventually) werent talking to Steam or vice versa with Aquantia enabled and the games were sitting in the background just waiting for that connection and Wifi allowed the full connection to happen and thus, the games were allowed by Steam to boot. Security issue?? DRM maybe?? Apparently, all Steam needs is to have that verification 1 time and your set, doesnt check it anymore once it passes. Very interesting.)