Grand Theft Auto V is an amazing and one of the most awaited video game for PC. With a great story, amazing Gameplay and improved Graphics, it will keep you stuck with you PC until you finish the complete game. Now, as the game is really huge in size, about 65GB, you may face several problems from downloading to installation and from playing to saving the game. Even I faced many such problems and wasted many hours fixing them one by one before and during the gameplay which was very irritating.
So, thought to share some of my troubleshooting tips here that helped me to get rid of those problems, so that you (our buddy users and gamers) don’t need to waste those hours and play the game comfortably. You can go through this guide covering most of the problems and their solutions that I came across and you may come across.
The very first thing is System requirements. GTA 5 requires pretty good gaming rig to play it comfortably. So you must have atleast the minimum system requirements mentioned by the game developers. Below, I’m posting Minimum, Average and Recommended requirements. Have a look. If you guys are looking for Save Game or Trainer for GTA 5, go ahead and download from this site, in One Click, Without any Survey.
Minimum System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz or AMD Phenom 9850 Quad-Core Black Edition
- Memory: 4 GB
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT or AMD Radeon HD 4870
- DirectX: DirectX 10
- HDD Space: 65 GB
Average System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5-680 3.6GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 810
- Memory: 6 GB
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 or AMD Radeon R7 260X v2
- DirectX: DirectX 11
- HDD Space: 65 GB
Recommended System Requirements:
- Operating System: Windows 8 64 bit or higher
- CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz or AMD FX-8350
- Memory: 8 GB
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870
- DirectX: DirectX 11
- HDD Space: 65 GB
GTA 5 Error “Connection to Download Server Lost. Reconnecting…”
I saw many people, including me, faced this error while downloading GTA 5 directly from RockStar. Few gamers who tried purchasing from Green Man Gaming also said they came across Connection lost error.
Solution for this problem is actually “Wait”. As we all know GTA 5 is most awaited game for PC, there are millions of users downloading the game at the same time and hence servers are overloaded due to which your downloads are getting stuck. So, either you can just WAIT or try to get the game from Steam because nobody so far reported connection problem with Steam.
GTA 5 Error “The RockStar Update Service is Unavailable (Code 1)”
Many people faced this error. You will also face lagging, freezing and CTD problem along with this error. It is simply because of your Windows account name. The solution is very simple. You need to create a new Windows account with Administrator rights and Run GTA 5 from there. See more about this issue below in Crashing section.
GTA 5 Unable to Install:
So finally after downloading the game successfully, sometimes we get stuck during the installation. There could be some errors, or the installer crashes or gets freeze. In such case, you can try out these steps:
- Usually your security programs block the installation assuming it could be harmful for the system. Specially Norton and AVG. So, no matter if you have any other Antivirus or any security programs installed, you must disable them and re-start the installation. It should go fine.
- Many times rebooting PC fixes most of the problems. You can restart and try again to install.
- If you are still unable to install then probably the downloaded file may be corrupt. Yes, I know this is going to be very annoying download 65GB again. But that’s not sure. You can try installing the same downloaded file on some other PC to make sure if it is your system’s problem or the file. If you don’t have other system, you can test the file integrity by downloading respective software. There are different tools for that.
- If you are installing from DVD and it fails, DVD might be faulty. You can go for replacement. Still, verify it by trying to install on another computer or laptop. Many times our DVD ROM use to be the culprit.
GTA 5 Wont load, or Crashes on launch:
Now, even if we install the game successfully, few of us may come across this problem. Either it won’t starts, or crashes on startup. The very common reason for this problem use to be the Drivers. For every new game, you must always update the graphics and other system drivers to the latest version.
You can get the drivers for your Video card from URLs:
- Download Nvidia Card drivers – http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
- Download AMD ATI Card drivers – http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDSupportHub.aspx
Apart from drivers, you must also update your drivers to the latest version, as mentioned in the system requirements also. So click this link and update DirectX to v11.
You may also need to turn off Windows UAC. It might be blocking the permission to run the game, although you allowed it during installation. So, it is better to turn it off until you are playing the game. You can do this by going to:
- Click Start and then type UAC in the Search box at the bottom.
- In Windows 8 or 8.1, tap Win+R and type UAC in RUN Box, press Enter
- In the open UAC window, drag the slider to bottom.
- Now reboot the PC and launch the game.
You may also come across an error saying “The RockStar Update Service is Unavailable (Code 1)” while launching the game. Most of the GTA 5 users faced this problem. It is because your Windows user name contains letters A to Z, a to z or numbers 0-9 from the basic roman alphabet. The best solution for this problem was to create new Windows user account with Administrator rights and play the game from there.
But, Rockstar has fixed the problem and now you can play GTA 5 with the original windows account. You only need to follow these official steps provided by the developers.
- Login in to the newly created Windows account > Copy the Game Data folder and paste it which can be accessed from both New & Old user accounts. You can do this by:
- Go to the “My Documents\Rockstar Games” and copy the “GTA V” folder.
- Now go to your root directory (e.g. C:\) and paste the folder there.
- Now log out of the new account and login to Old Windows account.
- And copy that Game data folder to this Old account. You can do this by:
- Go to your root directory (e.g. C:\) and copy the “GTA V” folder you pasted earlier.
- Go to the “My Documents” folder
- If you already have a “Rockstar Games” folder:
- Click into the “Rockstar Games” folder and paste the “GTA V” folder there.
- If you do not have a “Rockstar Games” folder:
- Create a new folder in this directory called “Rockstar Games” (without the quotes).
- Paste the “GTA V” folder in this new directory.
GTA 5 Error “GTAVLauncher.exe Stopped Responding”
This is another issue you can come across while launching the game. It happens usually because of out dated drivers, so you must have all recent drivers installed. But even if you are facing this error with updated drivers, then go through the following steps:
- If it is not drivers, then it would be your Security programs. Make sure all anti-virus programs are disabled and then run the launcher. It should work.
- If still you are facing the error and using AMD cards, then it may be because after installing the new drivers, your old drivers have not been cleaned. What you can do is launch AMD Driver Cleaner and start re-installing the drivers.
GTA 5 Crash To Desktop (CTD) while playing:
This is something very annoying. You are in a critical situation in game and the game crashes to desktop. Huff. Here are few things you can do to get rid of CTD:
- Most of the times CTD occurs when you have not enough resources to run the game comfortably. So, what you need to do is, close all unwanted processes from background. Open Task Manager > go to Process tab > right click and close all the processes which are not required.
- Disable startup apps. To do so Click Start > Run box > type ‘msconfig’. Now click Startup tab and click on hide Microsoft services. Disable all other programs which are not required.
- Make sure Antivirus and other Security programs are disabled.
- If you are using Nvidia card, then right click on the Nvidia gpu control panel and launch it. Then go in the thread optimization section and turn it on.
- In case of Ati or Radeon, then uninstall catalyst control center. Restart your pc and try to launch the game back again.
GTA 5 Black Screen:
- Make sure you have all system drivers updated including motherboard, GPU, etc. Always download it from manufacturers official websites, instead of Windows update.
- Go to game’s video settings and turn off VSync, anti-aliasing and filtering. If you are on Recommended system, then you don’t need this.
- Close all unwanted process running in background and eating up the resources.
The Black screen issue must be fixed by far, but in case you still facing it then only solution left is to re-install the game completely. By completely means, you must delete all left files and folders after removing the game, reboot PC and then install it again.
GTA 5 Lagging, Freezing and Low FPS Problems:
Frame drop or lagging or freezing are another common problems we face with huge / high end games like GTA 5. Let’s check out how we can get rid of these issues.
There are several settings we can do manually, but instead I will suggest you to try out Razer game booster. This is a software that sets up best settings for your game depending upon the system rigs.
For those who still want to do it manually, here we go:
If you are using Nvidia gpu then start Nvidia graphic card control panel. And then click on Manage 3D settings and search for power section. Click Power management and set the option as maximum performance.
