Fix: Hitman 3 Crashing, Won’t Launch, Black Screen, or Lags with FPS drops

When it comes to stealth gaming, most of us know about Hitman series games and most probably we’ve played too. Hitman III is a newly released title under the Hitman franchise that comes under the final part of the World of Assassination trilogy. It has been developed and published by IO Interactive for almost every platform like Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Xbox. Meanwhile, some of the players or fans are thinking that this is Hitman III is The Last Hitman but that’s not the case for sure. Now, just like other video games, several PC players are reporting that they’re experiencing Hitman 3 Crashing, Won’t Launch, Black Screen, or Lags with FPS drops issues.

If you’re also one of them and don’t want to continue playing the game like this, make sure to follow this full troubleshooting guide to fix the respective problem completely. This is the same story for almost every PC version of games whether it comes from a popular franchise like Hitman or an Indie Games genre. In the last couple of years, the number of crashes, lags, black screen issues, performance drops, errors have increased a lot for PC games as compared to the console version. No one likes the game crashing at startup or lagging or FPS drops, etc issues after using a powerful gaming rig or compatible PC configuration.

Why Does Hitman 3 Keep Crashing?

Well, there is no specific reason behind the startup crashing for the PC games as it may happen due to multiple reasons at multiple times. Here we’ve provided some of the possible aspects behind the startup crashing of PC games that you should take a quick look at below.

• The chances are high that your PC configuration isn’t compatible with the system requirements of the Hitman 3 game. If you’re not sure about it, you can check the system requirements below.
• It can possible that some of the temporary glitches or system cache issues are troubling you a lot.
• Sometimes the corrupted or missing game files on your PC/Laptop can also cause startup crashing or lagging.
• An outdated Windows OS build or an outdated graphics driver version can also trigger crashes while launching the game.
• You should also check your DirectX version whether it’s up-to-date or not. By updating the Windows version, your DirectX will be updated.
• In some scenarios, if your graphics card becomes outdated enough, it may not support the Direct3D Hardware Feature Level 11.0 GPU.
• It can possible that your either Hitman 3 game or the game launcher becomes outdated.
• Some of the background running tasks or programs can consume a lot of system resources which causes such issues.
• Maybe the Windows Security protection or any installed third-party Antivirus program is preventing the game files to run properly.

Minimum System Requirements:

• OS: 64-Bit Windows 10
• Processor: Intel CPU Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz / AMD CPU Phenom II X4 940
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon HD 7870
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 80 GB available space
• Requires Internet and Epic Games Account

Recommended System Requirements:

• OS: 64-Bit Windows 10
• Processor: Intel CPU Core i7 4790 4 GHz
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GPU GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD GPU Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 80 GB available space
• Requires Internet and Epic Games Account

Fix: Hitman 3 Crashing, Won’t Launch, Black Screen, or Lags with FPS drops

Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into the steps below. Keep in mind that both the Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for the Hitman 3 game. So, if in case, you haven’t updated your graphics driver yet, do this first.

1. Update Graphics Drivers

If you’re using the Nvidia graphics card then update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from the Nvidia official site here. But if you’re using the AMD graphics card on your system, then update the latest AMD Drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

• Open Steam on your Windows.
• Head over to the Settings > Click on the In-Game.
• Click on the checkbox to disable Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.
• Once the checkbox mark is removed, click on OK.

3. Adjust Discord Settings

• Launch Discord > Click on User Settings.
• Select Voice & Video from the left sidebar.
• Scroll down a bit and click on the Advanced.
• Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.
• Then disable Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority.
• Now, go to Overlay.
• You can also turn off the in-game overlay.
• Next, head over to Appearance.
• Go to Advanced.
• Disable Hardware Acceleration.
• Once done, restart the system.

4. Adjust Nvidia Control Panel Settings

• Click on Adjust image settings with preview under 3D settings.
• Select Use the advanced 3D image settings.
• Next, launch the Nvidia Control Panel.
• Click on Manage 3D settings> Go to Global Settings.
• Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Enable Threaded Optimization
  • Use Maximum Performance for Power Management
  • Turn off Low Latency Mode
  • Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance mode

Once done, restart your computer and check whether the Hitman 3 crashing issue is resolved or not.

5. Change AMD Control Panel Settings

• Go to Global Graphics.
  • Turn off Radeon Anti-Lag
  • Turn off Radeon Boost
  • Use Application settings for Anti-Aliasing Mode
  • Set Anti-aliasing Methodto Multi-sampling
  • Turn off Morphological Filtering
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Turn off Anisotropic Filtering
  • Use Performance mode for Texture Filtering Quality
  • You can also enable Surface Format Optimization
  • AMD Optimization for the Tesselation Mode
  • Wait for V-sync– Turn it off
  • Use AMD optimization for the Shader Cache
  • Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
  • Turn off Maximum Tesselation Level
  • Set Graphics for the GPU Workload
  • Turn off the Radeon Chill
  • Disable Frame Rate Target Control

6. Verify Game Files via Epic Games

Sometimes, verifying your installed game files can also resolve any kind of file corruption or missing status & you’ll be able to play your game again. To verify the installation of game files:

• Open the Epic Games Launcher on your computer.
• Go to the Hitman 3 game in your Library > Click on the three dots.
• A new small window will open > Select Verify.
• Depending on the size of the game, the verification process may take a couple of minutes.
• Once all done, click on the Launch button to run your game.

7. Uninstall Recent Windows 10 Update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. So, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite buggy and causing so many errors or problems.

• Go to Start menu > Click on Settings
• Next, go to Update and Security
• Click on View update history
• Now, if you can see that there is an update having KB4535996 has been already installed. Make sure to uninstall it.
• Here you will see the Uninstall updates option on the top of the page.
• Click on it and select the mentioned cumulative update version.
• Right-click on it > Select Uninstall.
• It may take some time to delete that update and your system may restart automatically.
• Have some patience and you can also manually reboot your Windows PC (if required).

Finally, you can run the Hitman 3 and check if the startup crashing has been fixed or not.

8. Remove Temporary Files

• Press Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the RUN program.
• Now, type %temp% and press enter.
• You will get a bunch of temporary files on a page.
• Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
  Next, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all the files.
• Sometimes some of the temporary files can’t be deleted. So, leave them as it is and close it.

9. Set Default CPU and Graphics Speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra-high performance from the CPU and GPU from the very first day. So, most of the users either buy an overclocked version or manually increased the overclocking speed. So, if you’ve also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing that you’re experiencing bottleneck or lagging or crashing related issues, just set it to default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or Zotac firestorm application in order to lower the clocking speed. Once done, you can run the Hitman 3 game to check whether it’s crashing at startup or not.

That’s it. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any queries.