Hearts of Iron IV- PC errors, crashes, fps drops, screen tearing, stuttering, lags, freezes, black screen, green flickering issue and performance fixes

BY AMIT BARAN ROY | After a span of 7 years, Paradox Interactive finally released Hearts of Iron IV, the sequel to the 2009’s grand strategy wargame Hearts of Iron III. The game is currently receiving very positive reviews on Steam and is definitely worth for $40. Hearts of Iron IV lets you take command of any nation in World War II; the most engaging conflict in world history. The game got released on June 6, 2016, which is the 72nd anniversary of the Normandy landings, and is currently available for PC, MAC and Linux systems. PC users, as usual, may be facing some issues related to the game and here we have listed down some of the common workarounds pertaining to them. Before you start moving down, have a look at the PC system requirements needed to play this game comfortably.

Minimum Specifications:

OS: Windows 7 64-bit or newer
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66 GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 650 @ 3.20 GHz
RAM: 4GB RAM
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5850 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX470 with 1GB VRAM
Storage: 2 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card
Supported GPUs at time of release:
AMD GPUs: 5850 series or higher, 6870 series or higher, 7850 or higher, R7 260 or higher
Nvidia GPUs: GTX470 or higher, GTX560 or higher, GTX660 or higher, GTX750 or higher, GTX 950 or higher,
Laptop GPU dedicated cards may work if they are on par with their desktop counterparts, but are not officially supported.

Recommended Specifications:

OS: Windows 7 64-bit or newer
Processor: Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.66 GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.20 GHz
RAM: 4GB RAM
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 6950 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX570 with 2GB VRAM
Storage: 2 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card
Supported GPUs at time of release:
AMD GPUs: 5850 series or higher, 6870 series or higher, 7850 or higher, R7 260 or higher
Nvidia GPUs: GTX470 or higher, GTX560 or higher, GTX660 or higher, GTX750 or higher, GTX 950 or higher,
Laptop GPU dedicated cards may work if they are on par with their desktop counterparts, but are not officially supported.

1. Hearts of Iron IV PC- Crash at startup/ CTD/ Game not responding/ APPCRASH/ Black screen fix:-

Update your Nvidia and AMD drivers to the latest versions.
Disable antivirus/firewall or add game to the exception list of the antivirus software.
Try validating your game files in Steam or a simple reinstallation may also fix some of the crashing issues.
Try disabling all recording softwares like Fraps, MSI AfterBurner, D3DGear etc. They may conflict with your DirectX Direct3D settings.
If your game is crashing while going fullscreen, try playing in Windowed mode. This has fixed it for many users.
Black screen issue- Well this issue can be due to lot of reasons. First of all, you should check that the in-game resolution matches the resolution supported by your display device so that there should not be any conflict. If you are using HDMI, try unplugging the HDMI cable from TV and launch the game. Wait a few mins before replugging the HDMI cable back into the TV.
Registry clean using CCleaner can also fix some of the crashes. You can download CCleaner from here.
For any DLL error or APPCRASH issue, it is recommended to do a clean install of Directx. Or, you can download the missing DLLs from here and paste them in the game directory.
Try disabling Steam Overlay.

2. Hearts of Iron IV PC- Steam Overlay is not working:-

For this issue, users can simply restart Steam and check if the Steam Overlay works. It is also advised to disable Steam Overlay if it makes the game to crash.

3. Hearts of Iron IV PC - "Failed to create a graphics device. Exiting.":-

This is an issue most likely due to multiple GPUs enabled. You can try disabling SLI or Crossfire and see if it fixes the issue.

4. Hearts of Iron IV PC- “Application closed ungracefully”:-

Try running the game as administrator and set compatibility mode as Windows XP and restart the game. Also try deleting game cache files from My Documents.

5. Hearts of Iron IV PC - Low FPS/ Frame Drops/Lags/ Stuttering/ Freezes:-

This goes without saying that you need to have updated AMD and Nvidia GPU drivers before playing this game. Especially if your drivers are more than 6 months old.
Disable SLI/ Crossfire.
Screen Tearing issue:- Turn on Triple buffering with V-sync in your Nvidia Control Panel settings. Or if you own G-sync monitors, then you don’t need to do anything else.
Green Flickering fix:- Disable Crossfire if you have it enabled.
For AMD users, disable Raptr from task manager. Disable any other intensive applications that may be running in background. Also try setting ‘Tessellation mode’ to 8x/16x and 'Texture Filtering Quality' to Performance from your latest Crimson edition Radeon software to fix frame rate drops.
For Nvidia users, go into your control panel 3d settings. Make sure that ‘Power Management Mode’ option should be set to ‘Prefer Maximum Performance’.
Turn off all overlaying softwares and disable any recording softwares like Fraps, D3DGear, MSI Afterburner etc.
Disable third party background apps and set High Priority for the game in Task Manager. Disable any kind of overclocking.

6. Hearts of Iron IV PC- Download stopped at 99% fix:-

This usually happens when the download is actually complete and Steam gets stucked. If you get this error, you can very well cancel the download and restart Steam.

Heads Up: Hearts of Iron IV is available for $39.99 on Steam.

Contact the author at amit@forceclaw.com

Check out more of our Tweaks and Fixes