GTA IV

Freeze FAQ

2008-05-02T10:33:00.009-04:00

Here is my FAQ for the PS3 GTA Freeze. I've put both community information, and my own knowledge and experience into this. I'm also asking community members to fill out this form so that a data gathering/statistical analysis can be performed.

Community Affected:

PS3 and Xbox 360 owners are amongst those who are affected. Primarily "Launch 60 GB" PlayStation 3 are apparently the most common affected. Personally I have a "Launch 20GB" with a HDD upgrade to 120GB.

Take-Two has stated that only a small amount of people are affected.

Techinical Overview/Problem

Basically, during gameplay, or cut scenes, the game will freeze, or halt and become not playable. Residual affects from this include, not being able to bring up the PlayStation Menu and continuation of music tracks or dialogue. Grand Theft Auto IV is installed onto your Hard Drive and then all audio tracks are played off the disks. This method is often used with PC games to increase performance and decrease load times. From this we can derive that either a memory error is occuring, or bad file on the install is causing the game to halt. The disc or quality of the disc is not solely responsible.

Looking further into this, you can just address this to a memory issue, either in the VRAM or RAM. Coding for a game like this, more than likely involves the use of memory registration in your code. If there is a fault, which hardware related, this will cause the rendering or runtime to freeze. Different from a core dump, which simply means a crash of the system kernel and normally the console restarts, this simply means that the game has entered a lock state.

Of course, I did not write the code, so the above is merely a educated guess as to what is going on. But just from the symptoms of what is occuring to me and others, I feel this is the best guess.

Problem Summary

Game freezes randomly (cut scene or not).
Audio continues to play after freeze.
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 affected (PlayStation more evident).
Ejecting the disc restarts console.
Soft-reset is needed.
PlayStation Menu is unaccessible.

Troubleshooting

Simple troubleshooting methods were explored initially when this problem occurred. Simply deleting game data and game save data was the initial troubleshooting step. Of course, this seemed like a reasonable troubleshooting effort, and more then likely occurred because of a bad install. When that didn't work, I thought deeper about the issue. Some PC games have had the same issue in the past merely for the location they had on their Hard Drives. Well, some people have installed new HDD and also reformatted and that did not solve the issue.

If you take a different approach, you can try to "normalize" your console by editing display settings. One suggests setting console to 720p resolution, since PS3 upscales for those of use who support high resolutions. This of course would put less strain on the VRAM. Others suggested turning off the Vibration feature on your Dual Shock 3 controller, disabling network connectivity and also not using the auto-save feature in the game.

To me, all of these indicate a feature issue, possibly due to compatibility with newer features of the PlayStation. This would indicate older systems would have the issue. Unfortunately, you can't apply that because people with newer systems have said they have had the same issue.

Take-Two released a twelve-step setup that may resolve the issue. Users are still reporting issues.

Troubleshooting Summary

Disabling Internet [Failed]
Disabling Vibration on DualShock 3 [Failed]
"Twelve-Step" [Failed]
Reinstalling game data [Failed]

Of course there are more details to the following, but I am more concerned about listed techinical information so below is the information I'm providing about my configuration. I suggest this be a template for filling out your setup information if you are having issues.

Date of Purchase: Launch
Type: 20GB
FirmWare Version: 2.30
PSN Name: MooseQuest

HDD Size: 120GB
Free Space: ~20GB
Folding@Home?: Yes
Position: Horizontal

Audio: Digital Optical
Video: HDMI
Resolution: 1080p
Network: Ethernet
Speed: 1Gbps

I plan on updating this when I wrap more metrics around the data.

Form Submission

GTA IV is Freezing on PS3!

2008-05-02T08:53:00.003-04:00

After making the ultimate decision and deciding to go with the PlayStation 3 version of GTA IV I'm sadden at the fact that I've been hit with a problem that seems to be plaguing others.

After opening up the game, installing and watching the opening cut scene, I was loving how the new GTA was playing out. During the walk back from the bowling alley with Michelle the game froze. I was initially upset, and just decided to restart. Without looking up any information, i figured it was a bad install and just deleted everything and started over.

It froze again. I can't remember where, but it immediately made check online to see if there was an issue. After going through many forums, I put out a statement on what I thought was the issue.

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=gta&message.id=378452#M378452

Welcome

2008-05-02T08:05:00.000-04:00

With all the hoopla and crap happening with GTA IV, I figured I'd start my own blog. Partly because I'm tired of looking in so many places for information. If I gather information here, it could be a central point to bounce off of, for more information.

Right now, I'm a little upset about the whole "PS3 Freezing" issue. Yes, it's happening to me, and yes I do have a copy for Xbox 360, but honestly I like the controls better for GTA with a DualShock controller.

So welcome to those who checking this out.

PSN Name
Date of Purchase
Type	outlook express backup
Firmware Version
Hard Drive Size
Free Space
Folding@Home installed?	Yes No
Position	Horizontal Vertical
Audio
Video
Resolution	480p 720i 720p 1080i 1080p
Network	Wireless (Wifi) Wired (Ethernet)
Speed