GTA 4: Best Win 10 Issues Fix 2020

This guide aims to fix:

– Unable to increase graphics settings
– Extreme pop-in / unloaded surfaces (no visible floor/invisible models)
– General poor performance
– Game not loading, black screen
– D3D error(s)

Introduction

GTA 4 is a notorious port and this concise guide aims to make the game playable in 2020.

This guide aims to fix:

– Unable to increase graphics settings
– Extreme pop-in / unloaded surfaces (no visible floor/invisible models)
– General poor performance
– Game not loading, black screen
– D3D error(s)
– Other errors/glitches

Before performing the below, if you have read other (similar) guides that havent worked, please undo your changes – especially any compatibility modes for older versions of windows.

Locate Game Files

Ensure the game is closed.
Enter your steam library and right click GTA 4.
Select properties and select local files and browse local files.
Open the GTAIV folder (this should contain GTAIV.exe) – if you do not have a steam install, this may be slightly different.

Create a new .txt file (right click > new > text file) and rename to “commandline.txt”

Fixing The Game

Open the commandline.txt file and paste:

“-availablevidmem 2048
-norestrictions
-nomemrestrict”

Ensure no quotations or spaces are present.

In your steam library, open the properties panel again > general. set launch options.
You must paste the same, but ensure there is a single space between each line, see below.

If you do not have GTA 4 on steam, you must right click the shortcut you use to open the game, select properties and under shortcut add ” -availablevidmem 2048 -norestrictions -nomemrestrict” into the target box, do not delete any text here. (This effectively does the same as above)

Ensure the game uses your GPU

Finally, to ensure GTA 4 is using your GPU go into windows settings, not control panel.
search graphics settings and select Desktop App and browse to find the folder we added commandline.txt. Here you should add the GTAIV.exe and the launcher exe (I had best results when adding both). You may also need to do the same in you GPU control panel.

For the control panel, ensure as many settings are set to application-controlled as possible. Enable threaded optimisation if you still have issues with GTA IV.

That’s it, start playing. GTA IV is a notorious port, so reduce graphics settings and slowly increase. Here are mine for a GTX 950 gpu: