Okay, here’s my attempt at a blog post about fixing Cyberpunk 2077 startup crashes, written in that kinda rough, personal style you asked for.
Cyberpunk 2077 Crash on Startup 2.0: My Painful Fix
So, I was super hyped to dive back into Night City after the 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty dropped. I mean, who wasn’t? But bam! Right from the jump, the game kept crashing. Like, wouldn’t even get past the initial loading screen. Super frustrating, right? I spent a whole freakin’ day troubleshooting, and here’s what finally worked for me.
First thing I did, classic move, was to verify the game files on Steam. Figured maybe the update messed something up. You know the drill: Right-click Cyberpunk 2077 in your library, go to Properties, then Local Files, and click “Verify integrity of game files…”. Did that, waited forever, still crashed. Ugh.
Next, I thought, “Okay, maybe it’s my drivers.” I had updated them recently, but maybe something went wrong. Went to the Nvidia website (or AMD if that’s your jam), downloaded the latest drivers, and did a clean install. Important part: Choose the “Custom (Advanced)” install option and check the “Perform a clean installation” box. This wipes out the old drivers completely. Restarted the PC, tried again… still crashing. Seriously?!
Then I started digging deeper. I remembered reading something about conflicting mods. Even if you think you uninstalled them, sometimes they leave files behind. So, I went into the game directory (usually something like “C:Program Files (x86)SteamsteamappscommonCyberpunk 2077”) and manually deleted all the folders related to mods. Stuff like “plugins,” “binx64plugins,” anything that looked suspicious. This actually took a while, hunting down all that leftover junk.
But guess what? Still. Crashing. I was starting to lose it at this point.
Finally, I stumbled across some forum posts talking about overlays. Turns out, things like the Steam overlay, Discord overlay, Nvidia GeForce Experience overlay – all that stuff can sometimes mess with the game. So, I disabled every single overlay I could find. In Steam, right-click the game, Properties, General, and uncheck “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game.” I also went into Discord settings and turned off the overlay there. And in GeForce Experience, I disabled the in-game overlay as well. Basically, nuked every overlay from orbit.
AND! IT! WORKED! I could finally launch the game. I swear, I almost cried.
Here’s the thing, though: After playing for a few hours, I wanted the Steam overlay back so I could see the framerate. So, I re-enabled just the Steam overlay, and the game still ran fine. I guess it was one of the other overlays that was causing the problem. My advice? Disable them all, get the game running, and then slowly add them back one by one to see which one is the culprit.
- Verify Game Files: Steam, Properties, Local Files.
- Update Drivers: Clean install!
- Remove Mods: Manually delete those folders!
- Disable Overlays: Steam, Discord, GeForce Experience, EVERYTHING!
Hope this helps someone else avoid the headache I went through. Happy gaming, choombas!
