Serious Sam 4 Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops

Serious Sam 4 is the newly launched first-person shooter video game developed by Croatian studio Croteam and published by Devolver Digital. As the title suggests, Serious Sam 4 is the fourth edition of the Serious Sam series and the prequel to Serious Sam 3. Though the game is well optimized and available for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Linux, Mac, Google Stadia, it seems that plenty of Serious Same 4 PC players are experiencing Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, or Lags with FPS drops issues.

According to several affected players, the PC version of the game feels a bit buggy and laggy as well. So, if you’re also one of the victims and don’t want to wait further in order to get a patch fix from the developers then you should check out this troubleshooting guide. Here we’ve shared all the possible workarounds that would help you a lot. Now, before heading over to the guide below, let’s take a quick look at the reasons for crashing below.

Why Does Serious Sam 4 Keep Crashing?

Check out some of the possible reasons behind the startup crashing issue of the Serious Sam 4 game below:

  • Maybe your PC configuration isn’t compatible with the system requirements of the game. You can check out ‘Serious Sam 4’ system requirements below.
  • Possibly there are some temporary glitch or cache-related issues happening on your computer. In that case, restarting your PC should fix the problem.
  • Chances are high that the game files are either corrupted or missing.
  • Maybe your computer is running an outdated Windows build or graphics driver version.
  • It can also possible that your DirectX version is either outdated or your outdated GPU card isn’t supporting the Direct3D Hardware Feature Level 11.0 GPU.
  • Sometimes an outdated game version or the game launcher version can also cause issues.
  • It’s also possible that some of the apps are running in the background with the higher consumption of CPU/Memory.
  • An Antivirus program or the Windows Firewall protection is preventing the game files to run properly.

Serious Sam 4 Crashing at Startup, Won't Launch, or Lags with FPS drops

Minimum System Requirements:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
  • Processor: 4-core CPU @ 2.5 GHz
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 780/970/1050 or AMD Radeon 7950/280/470 (3 GB VRAM)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 42 GB available space
  • Additional Notes: Requirements are based on 720p rendering resolution at 30 FPS

Recommended System Requirements:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 10 64-bit (1909)
  • Processor: 8-core CPU @ 3.3 GHz
  • Memory: 16 GB RAM
  • Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 1080/2060 or AMD Radeon Vega64/5700 (8 GB VRAM)
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 42 GB available space

Serious Sam 4 Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch, 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 Serious Sam 4 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

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 Steam

Serious Sam 4 gamers on Steam client can follow the below steps:

  • Open the Steam Library by logging into the account
  • You can find Serious Sam 4 game
  • Right-click on the game and click on Properties
  • Select the Local Files tab
  • Then click on Verify Integrity of game files
  • Wait for the process and then restart the game to check whether Serious Sam 4 Crashing issue has been fixed or not

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).

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 Serious Sam 4 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.

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