Missing Textures Issue

[JustinL]

If you are experiencing an issue where textures are not visible, the following instructions may solve the issue.

This issue can occur if your video drivers are incorrectly installed or have become corrupt.

These instructions explain how to completely remove all existing driver files and are recommended for advanced computer users only.

These instructions recommend using a third party application called Driver Sweeper, which was not developed by Valve and therefore we provide no support or guarantee regarding its use.

Please proceed at your own risk.

1. Uninstall your existing video drivers from the Add/Remove Programs window.

Click Start, then Run (or Windows Key + R) and type in the following command:

appwiz.cpl

Locate and uninstall your video drivers (They should be listed alphabetically under Nvidia or ATI)

2. Download and install the free driver removal utility call Driver Sweeper, available at the following URL:

http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

3. Restart your computer in Safe Mode. This can be accomplished by tapping the F8 key while your computer is booting up. A list should appear with Safe Mode as an option.

4. Launch Driver Sweeper (It should be located on your start menu where you installed it previously)

There will be checkboxes for "ATI - Display" and "NVIDIA - Display". Check both of these and click "Clean"

If you receive errors, please note exactly what they are.

It is recommended to repeat the cleaning process a few times to make sure all files are properly removed.

5. Restart your computer in normal mode (This should happen automatically. Pressing F8 again is not required)

You may notice some graphical irregularities (Items being larger than usual, and etc). This is normal.

Run Driver Sweeper one more time from normal mode to ensure that all driver files are removed.

6. Download and install the latest video drivers for your video card.

Nvidia Desktop Drivers - http://www.nvidia.com

ATI Desktop Drivers - http://www.ati.com

Notebook drivers should be obtained from your notebook manufacturer's website.

7. Restart your computer once the drivers are installed.

8. Launch the game and re-test the issue.

9. If the issue is still not resolved, some users have found that the issue was only resolved after downloading Riva Tuner (A third party graphics card tweaking tool) and doing the following:

- Launch Riva Tuner
- On the main tab, click the arrow to the right of "ForceWare detected"
- Click on the broom icon (last icon on the right). This will reset all graphics driver settings to their default values.
- Click OK and restart your computer.
- Test the game.

As with Driver Sweeper, Riva Tuner was not developed by Valve and we do not offer any support or guarantee of its use.

Riva Tuner is available here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download737.html

Also, some Vista users have found that toggling the Superfetch service on or off may alleviate problems with this game, including the missing texture issue. The amount of memory available in your system may affect which setting is appropriate for your computer. However, if you are experiencing problems running Grand Theft Auto IV, try turning this service off. If this service is typically disabled on your system, try turning it on.

To enable/disable this service, do the following:
- Click Start>Run (Windows Key + R) and type in "services.msc"
- Locate "Superfetch" in the list
- Right click on the service and choose "properties"
- Under "Startup type", choose "disabled" (or choose "Automatic" if the service is currently disabled) and hit Apply.
- Restart your computer.
- Test the game again.

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

"There appears to be two seperate issues with nvidia cards, that manifest themselves into the same sort of rendering defects.

The first is immediately having texturing problems upon loading the game. This seems to be fixable for many by cleaning and installing newer drivers.

The second is an accumulative problem, where over time (or rather, travel distance) more and more of the world has texturing problems,first lower resolution textures are used, and eventualy no textures at all for much of the world"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Above is a Quote from user Dustmonkey.



READ ON FOR ANSWER TO SECOND ISSUE!



I have discovered the answer to the second problem. While playing the game, I noticed that my hardrive was always spinning. This led me to believe that my pagefile was being used. Sure enough, I was out of RAM. My system has 2G of RAM. With my current settings on the Graphics page it says the game will use 800/1100. That means only 800M out of 1100M available. Task Manager has me pegged at 2G with the game minimized.

To confirm this is the problem. I tweaked my settings until my RAM did not go above 2G.

The following settings work for me. They fix my missing texture issue.

medium
highest
1
1
1
0

This means all slider bars to the left. This leaves me with 300/1100. Which actually puts me at 1.87G usage in task manager with the game minimized. I started with 400M usage before loading game. So the game is actually using 1.47G when the graphics settings say only 300M.

I have 3 GTX 280 in TRIPLE SLI, 2G RAM, 3.33Ghz Dual core OC to 4GhZ processor. I have to play with sliders all the way to the left.

Atleast I can drive all over the city without missing textures.

Hope this helps.


Brian

P.S. All I have to ♥♥♥♥♥ about now is what a memory hog this game is. I ordered 2G more RAM to bring me to 4G. I hope that is enough to increase my graphics settings a little more.

MODERATOR PLEASE ADD TO YOUR STICKY

Rockstar is the problem, his rig should have no problem at all running this game. Please rockstar update your ♥♥♥♥

[Freyar]

I'm hoping he has SLI disabled.

As far as I can tell, SLI ON/OFF has no impact on performance or texture missing issue.

Now I changed all my settings to lowest possible.

low
low
1
1
1
0

Task Manager shows 1.7G usage. Also, the RAM usage eventually goes over 2G after driving around. When this happens the texture issue comes back .

At these settings the game graphics are much worse than the 360 version.

[warlordkn]

so paxton is this fixed or not
i too have the loss of textures over time
it seems like a mem leak and as you said you hdd was running nonstop.

but now in your latest post you are saying that you switched to low/low, is this to assume that eaventually the problem still persisted, just took longer?

[cwsault]

Just a note, if you are using a laptop/notebook and need to update NVIDIA drivers, use www.laptopvideo2go.com. Many laptop NVIDIA cards are not included in the list of cards the driver setup program will install with, and require the laptop vendor to do their own version of the drivers. From LaptopVideo2Go you can download both the latest drivers, plus a modded version of a file to replace in the installer directory that lets them install with laptop video cards.

Yes warlord. The problem persisted over time. I guess we have to wait for nvidia and rockstar to get it together.

The first time I played GTA 4 everything was fine.
But today, I try to play again, and textures are missing !

I uninstall, clean and install again driver.
Nothing change (and it's quite normal, how can it play well yesterday and today appears missing texture ?)

I try the second option, but game do not save graphic change !

I will try to uninstall game and install again. Although I know nothing will change !

[haon8]

Does anybody know if this will work with the FILL IN issue, not just missing textures?

Im not an advanced user. How am i supposed to get this thing to work?
Isent NVIDIA and Rockstar supposed to work this out and just hand us a patch or something? This is so damn annoying, been waiting for a long time for this.

[ColeusRattus]

yeah, they have the patch that solves all the issues somewhere at rockstar and just forgot to release it until now...

Seriosuly, I bet they are working on it and will give us the patch as soon as it's ready.

[matutano]

I got 1gb... mininum required to play and this bug, so i will never get it working? It's kinda stupid...

[WILDCORE]

Originally Posted by paxton666

Yes warlord. The problem persisted over time. I guess we have to wait for nvidia and rockstar to get it together.

Same here. But I have 4GB RAM and one HD 3870x2. After at least 2h of game play the textures are gone. I can not even find the door to my apartment to save the game

So I guess nVidia, ATI and R* did something wrong or only R*

[thaCURSEDpie]

Originally Posted by WILDCORE

Same here. But I have 4GB RAM and one HD 3870x2. After at least 2h of game play the textures are gone. I can not even find the door to my apartment to save the game

So I guess nVidia, ATI and R* did something wrong or only R*

Same here, I have 3GB of DDR2 ram and a 8800GTS 320MB.
It gets worse overtime, and it totally DIFFERENT to the issue where there's not textures at all... I'm gonna mail Rockstar about this.