Possible solutions for Need ‘For Speed : Undercover’ performance, display and crashing problems

Several days ago, we reported about Need for Speed : Undercover leaking to BitTorrent networks right on the game’s release date. I’ve played the game for around 1 hour so far and I can’t say it’s impressive. Looks like EA tried to do a remake of NFS : Most Wanted and didn’t do a very good job of it. Anyway this post is not a review of the game but a discussion of various problems you may encounter with NFS : Undercover. I have presented with several possible solutions which will hopefully solve your problems once and for all.

Cannot change display settings or stuck with auto detected settings

Sometimes, you may not be able to change NFS Undercover display and graphics settings using in game menus. Common problems seem to be users not being able to change screen resolution and disable motion blur. Screen resolution can be set manually by editing the registry:

Run registry editor (regedit) and locate the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\EA Games\Need for Speed Undercover

Screen resolution can be set by editing the following two keys: g_Width = 1024 g_Height = 768 (For a screen resolution of 1024x768)

You can change several other game settings manually using the other keys located here. Be careful with editing registry values – always backup first.

Cannot run NFS : Undercover in Windowed Mode

Here is how to run Undercover in Windowed mode. Create a shortcut to the game exe on the desktop. Add –w switch to the end of target name (leave a space after the closing quotes and add –w and press ok). Run the game from the shortcut.

EDIT: The -w switch does not seem to be working for some users. No worries. Download NFS : Undercover Window Mode Fix from GameCopyWorld and extract all files to your NFS Undercover Directory. Edit the d3d9.ini file to set the Windowed mode as below:

• fullscreen=0 to run in Windowed mode
• fullscreen=1 to run in full screen

Slow framerate issues, sluggish performance, stuttering, crashes to desktop (CTD)

From what I have read in the forums, this game is not very well optimized. But a lot of performance issues with the game seem to be connected to cracked versions. As with any other game, groups from the warez scene and individuals have released various cracks for NFS : Undercover that bypass or remove the DRM protection in the game. These cracked exes are used by pirates as well as by legitimate users who don’t want the DRM on their systems. Unfortunately, some of these cracks are not very stable. Cracks by NoGrp, WARG, DarkC0der (Dakcoder) and 0x0008 seem to be merely bypassing the SecuROM protection and may cause the game to run sluggish, slowly and crash often. RELOADED and UNLOADED versions however seem to have protection and triggers completely removed and seem to work just fine.

If you are running on budget hardware / on a low end machine and getting slow performance, try tweaking game settings till you get an acceptable framerate. You may get a considerable performance boost if you disable motion blur. There is no option to do this directly but setting the world effects to medium would remove most of it.

Other notes

As usual, updating to the latest version of sound card and graphics card drivers will help too. ATI Catalyst 8.11 WHQL drivers can be found here and latest nVIDIA display drivers can be found here.

If I discover any more solutions, I will update this page.

Related Articles

• Pirates crack Need for Speed : Undercover DRM
• DVD Image (Clone DVD) of Need for Speed : Undercover (PC) leaks to BitTorrent

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