GTA V Start-Up Crashes, Bug Fix And Tweak Guide

Like any game worth its salt these days, Grand TheftAuto 5 on PC comes loaded with its fair share of problems. For the majority of us it's been plain sailing, but for those unlucky few who've been hit by any of the game-breaking glitches, then we've got the fixes for you.

We've also got our hands on the full list of command line functions for GTA 5, allowing you to manually alter everything in the game from DirectX effects, to frame limiting, borderless windowed mode, disabling depth of field, and much more. 

GTA 5 is unable to detect Windows Media Player

Grand Theft Auto 5 has built in functionality for playing your own tunes on the radio, for those all-important moments when Maroon 5 comes on and you need to change to something that won’t make your ears bleed - quick.

The knock-on effect of this is that if you don’t have Windows Media Player installed on your PC, an error message will pop up during GTA V’s installation, which reads "Unable to detect Windows Media Player on your system. Please install Windows Media Player, then retry the installation."

By default Windows Media Player comes loaded onto every Windows PC, but if for some reason you’ve uninstalled it then you need to run through the following instructions.

• Open the Control Panel
• Click Programs and Features
• Select “Turn Windows Features On or Off” on the far left-hand side
• In the window that now opens, ensure “Windows Media Player” is checked in the “Media Features” folder.
• Click “OK” and Windows Media Player will now install.
• Once complete, run the GTA 5 installation again.

Grand Theft Auto 5 launcher crashing to desktop, or error code “the Rockstar update service is unavailable (code 1)”

This is an issue cause by Windows usernames with unconventional characters, the full workaround solution to which can be found here.

GTA 5 PC 0xc00007b Error Fix

If you are hit with this error code when attempting to launch Grand Theft Auto 5 then is likely due to an out of date .Net framework. The solution to the 0xc00007b Error is to download the latest version, which can be found here. http://www.microsoft.com/en-pk/download/details.aspx?id=17851

If GTA V still doesn’t wrong following .Net framework installation, make sure you try running it as administrator, and also check your version of Windows is bang up to date.

Grand Theft Auto V Will Not Launch Bug

Some users are experiencing problems whereby GTA 5 crashes after launch or will not respond. If Wolfenstein: The New Order isn’t responding then you need to ensure you have the latest graphics drivers for your graphics card.
For Nvidia the Grand Theft Auto 5 graphics cards drivers needed are GeForce 350.12.

For AMD the Grand Theft Auto 5 graphics cards drivers needed are Catalyst 15.4 Beta.

How To Prevent Character Loss When Transferring Your Character From The Console Version Of GTA 5

If you haven’t played GTA 5 since before December 2013 and you attempt to transfer your character process over to the PC version, you may lose important character data during the transfer process. The solution to this is to boot up your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version and save it ahead of transfer, which should now just work normally.

In-game GTA 5 benchmark tool is broken

Unfortunately at launch the Grand Theft Auto 5 benchmark tool is a little broken, and your system will hang when used. One workaround so far is to not use the benchmark tool at all until you’ve saved at a safehouse in story mode, but this is still temperamental.

GTA 5 Command Line Arguments And Graphics Tweaks

To use all of these command line tweaks you need to create a text document called “commandline.txt” in your GTA 5 installation directory. This is typically located at ‘Local Disk (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Steam > SteamApps > common > Grand Theft Auto V’. Inside the newly created documented just add the command lines you wish to each, one per line. Save the document and then load up GTA V to apply.

-UseAutoSettings:
Use automatic generated settings

-benchmark:
Starts the benchmark test from the command line

-benchmarkFrameTimes:
Optionally output the individual frame times from the benchmark

-benchmarkIterations:
Specifies the number of iterations to run the benchmark for

-benchmarkPass:
Specifies an individual benchmark scene test should be done, and which test that should be

-benchmarknoaudio:
Disable audio processing for graphics benchmark purposes

-disableHyperthreading:
Don’t count hyperthreaded cores as real ones to create tasks on

-goStraightToMP:
Jump straight to MP while loading

-ignoreDifferentVideoCard:
Don’t reset settings with a new card

-ignoreprofile:
Ignore the current profile settings

-mouseexclusive:
Game uses mouse exclusively.

-noInGameDOF:
Disable In-game DOF effects

-safemode:
Start settings at minimum but don’t save it

-shadowSoftness:
Selects between linear, rpdb, box 4×4, soft 16

-uilanguage:
Set language GTA 5 uses

-useMinimumSettings:
Reset settings to the minimum

-HDStreamingInFlight:
Enable HD streaming while in flight

-SSA:
Enable SSA

-SSAO:
Set SSAO quality (0-2)

-anisotropicQualityLevel:
Set anisotropic Filter Quality Level (0-16)

-cityDensity:
Control city density (0.0 – 1.0)

-fogVolumes:
Enable lights volumetric effects in foggy weather

-fxaa:
Set FXAA quality (0-3)

-grassQuality:
Set grass quality (0-5)

-lodScale:
Set LOD Distance Level (0.0-1.0f)

-particleQuality:
Set particle quality (0-2)

-particleShadows:
Enable particle shadows

-pedLodBias:
Set Pedestrians LOD Distance Bias (0.0-1.0f)

-postFX:
Set postFX quality (0-3)

-reflectionBlur:
Enable reflection map blur

-reflectionQuality:
Set reflection quality (0-3)

-shaderQuality:
Set shader quality (0-2)

-shadowLongShadows:
Enable shadow rendering for dusk and dawn

-shadowQuality:
Set shadow quality (0-3)

-tessellation:
Set tessellation on or off (0-3)

-textureQuality:
Set texture quality (0-2)

-txaa:
Enable NVidia TXAA

-vehicleLodBias:
Set Vehicles LOD Distance Bias (0.0-1.0f)

-waterQuality:
Set water quality (0-1)

-keyboardLocal:
Sets the keyboard layout to the specified region.

-hdr:
Set the whole rendering pipeline to 16-bit

-noquattransform:
Don’t use quaternion transforms for placed entities

-DX10:
Force 10.0 feature set

-DX10_1:
Force 10.1 feature set

-DX11:
Force 11.0 feature set

-GPUCount:
Manual override GPU Count

-adapter:
Use the specified screen adapter number (zero-based)

-borderless:
Set main window to be borderless

-disallowResizeWindow:
Do Not allow the window to be resized

-frameLimit:
number of vertical synchronizations to limit game to

-fullscreen:
Force fullscreen mode

-height:
Set height of main render window (default is 480)

-multiSample:
Number of multisamples (1, 2, 4, 8, or 16)

-width:
Set width of main render window (default is 640)

-windowed:
Force windowed mode

-StraightIntoFreemode:
If present the game will automatically launch into the GTA Online multiplayer game in freemode. 

With any luck we've got all the big issues covered here, but if notice any more bugs and/or fixes then let us know in the comments section below and we'll be sure to update it.