BioShock 2

BioShock 2

53 ratings
(Possible) Fix for random CTDs in Bioshock 2
By Pheabus2K9
Crashing to desktop every few minutes when playing Bioshock 2 on Win7 or later systems? If yes, this guide is for you.
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
A bad console port for PC
We PC gamers have long been plagued by bad console ports, while some of them run at poor framerate, others simply refuse to work on a variety of PC systems, for me Bioshock 2 is the latter, it runs at acceptable framerate but crashes like a trainwreck on my Win7 (x64 Ultimate) laptop, sometimes almost drove me mad, just look at those crash reports:

Fortunately, through all those crashes, I managed to tweak the game to reduce them to a acceptable rate.
However, I'll be honest to tell you, even those tweaks won't eliminate 100% of the CTDs, but neither will any other guides on Steam or Internet do, trust me.
Let's see what we can do.
Launch options and compablity mode
If you're playing this game on Win7, you may want to do following things:
1. Run the game in compability mode for Windows Vista SP2, as Administrator;
2. Run the game in dx9 mode: right click game in Steam library -> properties -> general -> set launch options -> type "-dx9" without quote.
Note: if you really want the extra eye candy of dx10, read the following section especially .ini tweaks on texture streaming.
Run the game in windowed mode
The game has know issues in fullscreen mode, so make "windowed mode" under "graphic options" is on:
Don't like playing in windowed mode? You can use a program called Borderlessgaming [github.com]to get rid of the titile bar, and thus run the game in a borderless window.
Tweak the .ini files
Like most Unreal Engine games, Bioshock 2 has a set of .ini files that is tweakable via simple text editing, some of those tweaks can help us reduce crash, but be cautious when altering these values, it can make this already poor console-port game even more unstable, so make a backup before any changes are done, you've been warned.
The config files we're going to tweak are located at C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Bioshock2Steam, since the \AppData\ folder is hidden by default, you may want to unhide it to get access to those .ini files.

Tweak texture steaming:
In Bioshock2SP.ini, find TextureStreamingMemoryLimit and TextureStreamingDistanceLimit under [Engine.RenderConfig], and change TextureStreamingMemoryLimit to your graphic card's VRAM (e.g. I have 2G VRAM so I use 2048), also change TextureStreamingDistanceLimit to 9000-10000:

Lower the mininum smoothed framerate value:
In Bioshock2SP.ini, find MinDesiredFrameRate under [WinDrv.WindowsClient], and change it to a lower value (e.g. 15-20), you might experience slightly lower overall fps, but the game will be more stable this way.

Enable vsync
Contrary to popular belief, the game actually crashes less when vsync is enabled, but the in-game vsync is very sluggish and low performance, so it's better to disable vsync in game but enable it in your graphic driver.
In Bioshock2SP.ini, search for UseVSync and change the value to false, there are multiple entries under [BioDrv.BioRenderDevice] , [D3DDrv10.D3DRenderDevice10] and [ShockGame.ShockUserSettings], if you're not sure, just change all of them to "UseVSync=False".
Then enable vsync in your graphic card driver (e.g. Nvidia control panel):

Last but not the least: make sure your Bioshock2SP.ini is set to read-only after tweaking so the game won't change it back.
Uninstall Windows update KB2670838
Strangely enough a Windows update can cause a game to crash, but according to many users this is just the case, the Windows platform update KB2670838 for Win7 is causing trouble for Bioshock 2 and a few other dx10 games, you may want to uninstall it:
Click start->control panel->uninstall a program->view installed updates, search for KB2670838 and uninstall it, restart you pc, done.
In case you may concern, the KB2670838 update is atcually a prerequisite update for IE10/11, since most gamers use Fireforx or Chrome, it's not a big problem to uninstall IE10/11 along with this update, but if you do prefer IE10/11, you should keep this update and try other fixes.
Conclusion
Voilà, now you've eliminated 80-90% crashes of this game, I say that because I still have a few random CTDs even after applying all those tweaks, but they're rare now and not too much game-breaking, just remember to save often by pressing the quicksave button, you'll be mostly trouble-free on your journey in Rapture.

If anyone finds other useful fixes for Bioshck 2 crash please tell me ( I've read almost all the related guides on Steam and 2K forums though), I'll add them to this guide when possible.
30 Comments
Pheabus2K9  [author] 9 Aug, 2017 @ 3:56pm 
Sry guys haven't checked this for quite a long time while I'm away from Steam.
Tbh for now the best fix possible is to play BioShock 2 HD ;)
L o n e l y 6 Aug, 2017 @ 3:30pm 
lol
HairyOreo 5 Aug, 2017 @ 6:29am 
One thing that seems to work for me (so far) is to set Bioshock2.exe and Bioshock2Launcher.exe to WIndows XP (Service Pack 3) from your steamapps folder and use the launcher instead of Steam.
Blouda 1 Jan, 2016 @ 2:47pm 
I have a serious problem with this game. At the beginning it crashed twice but then it went fine for and hour . I stopped playing then i started the game and it went fine i played 2 hour straight without any crash . Now i cant even start it ( i cant go to the main menu ) it always crashes after the intro with the little sister which is stacking the blocks and then they collapse after the big daddy came in , then the screen goes black and im back at the desktop .... :(
Pheabus2K9  [author] 5 Dec, 2015 @ 3:45am 
@Tri. Dedine: Thanks for the feedback. The reason you have to make it read-only is to prevent the game resetting the file, otherwise it will render most of changes no effect at all.
But about your concerns, yeah, it might have something to do with the tweaks(I haven't the game installed on my current pc so I can't test which tweak caused this), but if you do want to play the trial levels, keep a separate writable Bioshock2SP.ini (rename it to whatever you like) and switch to this .ini when you play trial levels. My impression is that those levels are largely CTD-free because they have less scripted events than the story levels.
When playing story levels, I still recommend making the file read-only for maximum stability.
Tri. Dedine 5 Dec, 2015 @ 2:21am 
"Last but not the least: make sure your Bioshock2SP.ini is set to read-only after tweaking so the game won't change it back."

I highly suggest against this; at least for me, this stopped my progress with the Protector Trials - there is a string in this file that changes according to your progress, and it will not save those levels if the file is read-only.
Tri. Dedine 2 Dec, 2015 @ 5:46pm 
For me, the .ini-file modifications and adding -dx9 fixed all my crashing. Haven't had one in 5 hours, on Windows 10 Ultimate.
Agenta 8 Aug, 2015 @ 6:07pm 
The other thing that sometimes does it is type -dx9 in steam launch options for the original bioshockk games. This can drastically lower the number of times the games CTD.
D3M3NT3_D3CL@R@D0 6 Aug, 2015 @ 9:58pm 
really usefull!! it works! thanks!!
Pheabus2K9  [author] 10 Apr, 2015 @ 5:52pm 
@Darth Soul, good to know, always glad to help a friend:D. Just remember to save often though, it may still crash at unexpected circumstances.