GTA IV very slow at loading

Naff8000 · 8 Nov 2009 at 13:01

Hi I've just installed windows 7 HP 64 and reinstalled GTA on my 2nd hard drive, same as when I had XP. The difference is now GTA takes an ETERNITY to load. The picture screens of the characters we're 3 characters before I was in, now it's 9!, plus and extra 30+ sec wait on the black screen before I'm in the game.......same with most missions.

Does anyone know what this might be about? I'm running in SP3 XP compatibility mode.

edit: Infact every black loading screen now takes at least 20-30 secs, some missions have over 5 of these screens!

Psymonkee · 8 Nov 2009 at 13:03

when you hit 'start' at the initial menu press the 'home' button to bring up the GFWL thingy - it'll load much quicker. Mid mission I don't know

rancid-a · 8 Nov 2009 at 13:11

My GTA4 (vista 64) sometimes used to takes ages to load but this was solved by tapping space bar a few times after the rockstar titles come up. Not sure about your troubles ingame though.

Confused · 8 Nov 2009 at 13:34

Why are you running in XP compatibility mode?

Naff8000 · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:02

Confused said:
Why are you running in XP compatibility mode?

Well I turned if off but it didn't make any difference

Naff8000 · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:06

I tried the other two ideas, one of them is definetly working! It's back to normal speed now. Thanks

bob055 · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:09

have your got Vsync on? if you have turn it off, try that aswell

kablooey · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:10

Having vsync enabled can also cause very slow load speeds.

Pulse · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:19

Very wierd, had the same problem and one of the those two solutions seemed to have worked. Maybe we should have tried them separately too see which ones work eh?

SkeeterUK · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:28

Well not sure of ur prob but generally gta4 has a bit of a issue when u start the game i.e want to launch it due to so many checks and needing to load another app first to play. Takes me a min or two on my spec just to get the thing to go full screen and start from when you click on the shortcut.

BoozerDawg · 8 Nov 2009 at 14:49

I know on the loading screens with the characters theres some stupid bug where, if you have the GFW Live bar open while its loading, it loads up much quicker (3 character screens as opposed to god knows how many). No idea why, heres hoping the next patch sorts it out.

how random · 8 Nov 2009 at 15:03

Does anyone have any idea when the next patch is coming out?

SkeeterUK · 8 Nov 2009 at 15:05

Never, unless something gets messed up from long term play. As its been so long since the last patch.

LoadsaMoney · 8 Nov 2009 at 16:15

Confused said:
Why are you running in XP compatibility mode?

Apparently thats the only way it can be installed/ran on Win 7, but works fine for me without any compatability mode.

mame · 8 Nov 2009 at 17:03

I doubt it's your problem but when I turned super-fetch off the only real difference I found was GTA 4 loading time to be much longer.

AWPC · 8 Nov 2009 at 21:49

GTA4 has a very bad loader same as the console versions. I reinstalled it on my Samsung 1TB with 32Mb cache and its a lot quicker than a 16MB cache HD.

As for a patch its unlikely now as the dev team are working on something else but they still keep the community ingame messages on startup up to date so who knows they may even release the 2 DLC mission packs on PC at some time when the 360 sales dry up as MS paid for 360 exclusivity so no PS3 sales possible but PC as it uses GFWL could happen quickly if MS wish it to.