[Runtime Bug]: Crash on start for both Portal and HL2:RTX

[ted-sheeran]

Describe the bug

These are for the steam release versions, not any personal meddling. The application opens, whether it be portal or half-life 2. That is it. By opens, I mean the valve brand screen displays, with the Remix blurbs in all their normal spots. That last for about 1-2 seconds. The sound of the valve theme cuts off, and the application freezes. After about 20 seconds of thinking, and my tired clicking, the application closes or the Runtime failure box appears. My drivers have always been the newest possible, but this has been a persistent issue with portal and now HL2.

How do you reproduce the bug?

Fresh download the game and press play, apparently. :) Those were the only steps taken for HL2

What is the expected behavior?

I've played Portal RTX. Much closer to the game's release, it actually booted, and worked, and I could play levels, and it was fun. Then the next time I tried, and believe me I've scared myself with some things I've tried, it does not open.

Version

Whatever HL2 has

Logs

bridge32.log bridge64.log remix-dxvk.log

Crash dumps

NvRemixBridge.exe_20250313_150153.dmp NvRemixBridge.exe_20250319_012057.dmp NvRemixBridge.exe_20250319_012408.dmp NvRemixBridge.exe_20250319_014729.dmp

Media

No response

[anon-apple]

On the first launch HL2: RTX (and Remix in general) does take a long time to load, you may need to wait a minute or more depending on your CPU due to an issue which has yet to have the fix integrated. Essentially it is compiling some shaders synchronously and blocking the game from executing until that is done, which makes the application stop responding for that duration.

If you still can't get it working after giving it a bit more time to load though then feel free to mention that and keep this issue open.

[ted-sheeran]

ngl this is the least helpful anyone has been to me in recent memory and I manage in hospitality. At least read the damn problem first. You think I haven't tried every method of patience or lack thereof an uncountably finite number of times? The Runtime error window closes the game itself after having frozen for long enough. It fails after 2 seconds. I'd be waiting for nothing.

[anon-apple]

It was unclear if it closed due to you closing it yourself or by forcing windows to due to it being in the not responding state (perhaps the "tired clicking" bit threw me off, because that's how I read it initially). It's more clear now that it is just doing that on its own without any interaction, sorry about that.

Anyways from the info provided I can't entirely determine what's going wrong. The application does crash, but the dump is possibly just a red herring as it is crashing trying to load assets when the rest of the application has already shut down already I think, evident too by this message:

[01:47:26.936] warn:  Async asset loading thread is running while device is being destroyed! Attempting to join...

So that's a bug of sorts, but the real question is more why it's shutting down to begin with at that point.

Only other oddity is how it attempts to make a 1x1 swapchain just before it decides to shut down finally, may be related to this in the bridge logs:

[01:47:25.256] info:  Creating a NON thread-safe D3D9 device.
[01:47:25.256] warn:  [WndProc][set] Calling WndProc::set(...) without an intermediate unset(). Calling implicitly...
[01:47:25.257] err:   A null pFullscreenDisplayMode was passed to IDirect3D9Ex::CreateDeviceEx().

Best I can suggest based on the fact that something is odd with the fullscreen mode there is try to run it windowed, and if that works then you could try switching it to borderless fullscreen from the game's options. You can do that by passing -window in the Properties->Launch Options on steam for the game.

[NV-DM]

REMIX-4042 for tracking.

[ted-sheeran]

If anything you'd think that would help. The launch actually fails faster now. Genuinely think my PC is cursed with this. On another note the base game of Half Life 2 just doesn't open at all after i downloaded the new 572.81 drivers :)

[MarkEHenderson]

Hi ted-sheeran

If you have time, answering these questions would help us with investigating the crashes you've been seeing.

1. What happens when you add -window to the steam launch commands?
2. What about adding -full instead?
3. Do you have any game overlays, recording software, or other 3rd party programs that may be getting between the game rendering and your display?
4. Is there anything else special or unique about your computer setup?

Thanks, Mark

[NV-LL]

Hi @ted-sheeran - checking in to see if you can provide the info requested in the previous comment, to help us troubleshoot this issue. We'd also like to inform you of our stale ticket policy, specifically that this ticket will be closed as 'went stale' if it does not receive a response in the next 2 weeks. Thank you!

[NV-LL]

Hi @ted-sheeran - checking in to see if you can provide the info requested in the previous comment, to help us troubleshoot this issue. Thank you!

[temmiesaidhoi]

i am having the same issue, and i couldnt find any fixes. it loads at first, then crashes and shows a menu that says "runtime error" and i cant do anything except look at it and close the game.

bridge32.log bridge64.log remix-dxvk.log

those are the logs, my pc specs are: cpu: amd ryzen9 3900x ram: 32gb gpu: rtx 2080 super

i saw someone say to have it try running in windowed, that changed nothing. id appreciate any other possible help i could get

[NV-LL]

Thanks for the info @temmiesaidhoi! We want to confirm - do you have any recording/overlay software, or any other 3rd-party program that might be interacting with the game between rendering and display?

[temmiesaidhoi]

i tried closing everything on my pc except steam and rtx portal (i turned steam overlay off when i did) and still had the same issue

[NV-LL]

Thanks @temmiesaidhoi - based on your logs, your crashes appear related to #774. We suggest you keep an eye on that ticket for updates, and let us know in that thread if you have any other questions.