Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 Tweak Guide

[Page 3] Troubleshooting Tips



This section contains specific troubleshooting tips which address many of the common problems experienced by GRAW 2 players. Make sure to go through all of the advice below if you're having problems with the game.


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Official Support: The first place to look for official support information is on the Ubisoft Support Site, which contains answers to many common problems. Also make sure to read the game's ReadmeENG.txt file and the game's manual, both found under the \Program Files\Ubisoft\Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2\Support\Manual\ directory, as they contain a lot of useful information. If these don't help you, try the Official GRAW Forums or the GhostRecon.net GRAW 2 Forum for community support and information.


Note that the first time you start GRAW 2, you will see a dialog box which tells you whether all the components of your system meet GRAW 2's requirements. This program can be found under your \Program Files\Ubisoft\Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2\Support\Detection\ directory and is called Detectionui_r.exe - you can run it at any time. If there are any red crosses against any component, investigate further. To see the exact minimum requirements for each component, left-click on the component's name (e.g. left click once on CPU Frequency and look at the bottom of the box for details). At times this application can mis-detect some newer hardware or software components, so as long as you're certain your hardware is higher than the minimum, and your drivers are the latest available, you should be fine.


Game Bugs: There are currently a range of known bugs for GRAW 2, including things like a lack of Dynamic Shadows on some graphics cards using certain driver versions; sound issues; tagging issues in Deathcam mode; and some unexplained crashing. These can only be fixed via patches, so keep an eye on page 4 of the guide for details of patches as they are released.


Windows Vista/7 Users: If you're having problems running this game under Windows Vista or 7, first make sure that you're using the latest graphics and audio drivers for your hardware, and the latest version of this game (see page 4 for patch details). Next, make sure you don't change your UAC settings after the game has been installed, as due to Virtualization this can change the location of the game files and settings. If you can't launch the game successfully when UAC is enabled, you will need to run the game with full Admin privileges. To do this either right-click on the launch icon and select 'Run as Administrator', or right-click on the launch icon, select Properties and under the Compatibility tab tick 'Run this program as an administrator' then click OK. I strongly recommend that you refer to the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for more information.


Ageia PhysX Drivers: GRAW 2 requires the 7.05.17 Ageia PhysX Drivers or newer to work properly, even if you don't have an Ageia PhysX card or an Nvidia PhysX capable GPU. You can attempt to install the latest version of the PhysX drivers - which are included in the latest Nvidia graphics drivers and automatically installed, or available as a separate download here.


Sound Problems: See the Audio settings in the In-Game Settings section first. If you are having audio problems, then aside from making sure you're using the latest audio drivers for your sound card, GRIN recommends that you set the audio renderer to 'General Software'.


Mouse/Keyboard Lag: Typically the most common cause of mouse or keyboard lag is low framerates, so check your framerate using FRAPS and if it dips into the low teens or below then you will start getting noticeable control lag - lower various settings such as Resolution and/or Texture Quality and/or Post Effects for example to improve framerate.


Background Programs: Disable all background applications - especially virus, trojan and spyware scanners and messaging utilities. These applications can and do use up valuable CPU resources, take up precious RAM, cause memory conflicts and crashes to desktop, but most importantly they interfere with read/writes to your hard drive effectively slowing it down and causing even more in-game freezes and longer loading times. Full instructions on how to identify your startup programs and services and how to correctly disable unnecessary ones are in my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion. This is an important step you should not miss.


Overclocking: If you've overclocked any components on your system and are having problems such as crashes, reboots or graphical anomalies, the first thing to do is set everything back to default speeds and try running the game. If you don't experience the same problems at default speed, or they're reduced in severity, then your overclock is the primary culprit. Either permanently reduce your overclock and/or increase cooling to regain stability. Don't assume that because other games run with stability at a particular speed that GRAW 2 will do the same.


There are obviously many more problems people are experiencing with the game, but most of these are due to a lack of system optimization. GRAW 2 is based on a relatively solid and optimized game engine. In general the game can and does run with stability on a system which isn't overly stressed and poorly optimized. If you don't spend the time to optimize your PC, cool it properly, reduce/remove your overclocks, and select appropriate settings then you will experience more crashes, freezes etc. I once again strongly suggest reading the free TweakGuides Tweaking Companion at the very least if you want to resolve most issues with this and any other game.



That's just a basic rundown of troubleshooting tips. Read the remainder of this guide for more specific settings and tweaks which can help improve your performance and resolve any problems.