Fix Arcania Gothic 4 Crash At Startup & Launch, Audio Issues, Black Screen

More good games for the PC – this time the 4th installment of highly popular gaming franchise Gothic. Arcania Gothic 4 continues the storyline after Gothic 3 – the game looks better and plays a lot similar to its predecessor. While the it has not received stellar ratings from various online reviews, Gothic 4 does not appear to be a flop either. For me it looks like a loot filled game you can waste a lot of time on. Anyway here’s our mini troubleshooting article for Gothic 4 – this post tries to address some of the most common problems people seem to be experiencing with the game, such as crash to desktop (CTD) at startup, black screens and other launch errors along with audio issues.

Game crashes to desktop (CTD) at launch, black screen or won’t start

Solution 1

There can be a number of different reasons why this can happen but here’s a common fix you can try. We have mentioned this previously in troubleshooting posts for other games. This applies to Gothic 4 as well and we can confirm that some people have managed to resolve their launch errors with this method. Gothic 4 might crash if your sound card’s audio sampling rate is set to any value above 24 bit/48000 Hz range. To fix this issue, follow the steps below (applicable on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems):

  1. Open Control Panel –> Sound.
  2. In the ‘Playback’ tab, select ‘Speakers’. Choose ‘Properties’.
  3. In the Speaker Properties window, switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.
  4. Under the ‘Default Format’ drop down, choose 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality) option.
  5. Close all Windows by pressing Ok. Run the game.

Windows 7 Sound Fix

Note that you should try this fix if you have run into audio issues including noisy sound, stuttering or lagging audio, no audio, etc. as well.

Solution 2

  1. Uninstall the game
  2. Manually delete the Arcania registry key located under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\DirectInput (using Registry Editor)
  3. Delete the game settings folder inside your My Documents (Documents in Win 7) folder
  4. Reinstall the game – it’s preffered that you try installing the game to your root directory ( Ex – X:\Gothic 4\, where X is your root drive)

Note that we cannot guarantee the above fixes will work in all CTD scenarios – however, they are worth a try. This article is a work in progress – it will be updated as more solutions are found.

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