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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9 Comments

  1. Anonymous // 10/25/2010 09:32:00 PM  

    I have windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit installed on my DV7-1451NR and have had trouble installing Directx 9+ to resolve the issue of this game not running due to missing DX9 files. I managed to install DX9 but now the game doesn't display any error windows, it just crashes at launch? I've tried the first fix with no luck, I'm a bit annoyed to try the 2nd fix due to dealing with the reg... "pay it forward" God Bless www.get2help2.com/asap

  2. Unknown // 3/23/2011 08:56:00 AM  
    This comment has been removed by the author.
  3. Unknown // 3/23/2011 08:58:00 AM  

    When I installed Gothic 4, it uninstalled my Physx software, rather than updating it. This caused an immediate crash when launching Gothic 4. Downloading the latest Physx software from Nvidia and re-installing it fixed the on-launch crash.

  4. Crooko // 6/25/2011 08:11:00 AM  

    HAS anyone had the problem when you first start a new game and when your suposed to move and what not, you under the map, like the cheat "noclip" i can see the world above me and some objects are the same level as me, but i cannot get to the game world, im stuck under the map, every time i start a new game dose the same thing, and i tryed turning graphics down but still no go :( help anyone?

  5. Anonymous // 2/10/2012 07:27:00 PM  

    when i launch Arcania:Gothic 4i,it appears on my desktop a black screen with the error:,,cannot create 3D device,error XXXXXXXX[x are some numbers].What should I do on that?I've installed the directx from the game but didn't worked and then i've installed directx 11 and still no results.Can anyone help?????

  6. Yakizashi // 2/22/2012 09:46:00 AM  

    Check it out, i put the disk into my computer and it wont even read the disk i have to manually go to My Computer and click on the C Drive to get it to start up. I know it's not my C drive since alot of other games i just put the disk in and it reads it just fine along with movies to. Any idea why it does this for this game?

  7. Unknown // 12/20/2012 06:45:00 AM  
  8. Unknown // 12/17/2015 05:02:00 AM  

    God bless you!

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