Can't play the game; freezes on startup

[plutomaniac]

Bad drivers or bad graphics card. Now it crashed due to a driver library. I can't know if it is hardware or software related but it definitely has to do with your AMD graphics card. Try some older Windows 8 compatible driver, not 13.1 and not the 13.3 beta. Maybe they f&!@# up something at the latter drivers.

[SadPanda]

Just tried with 12.10. Tried a few of the usual troubleshooting methods with that, and still nothing. Should I still try with the fresh HDD installs, or does this pretty much confirm I have a bad graphics card?

[plutomaniac]

No, most probably the 13.3 beta was broken. If you want try the format option as it will eliminate the operating system's fault. But notice to not install any programs before trying the game. Just the drivers and Windows updates before testing the game.

If it works, then it means that some operating system option/program was causing this. If not, then it's an AMD issue (hardware or driver related).

[SadPanda]

Well I'll be damned. It worked.

Formatted my HDD, disconnected my SSD, reinstalled Windows on the HDD, installed only the Catalyst drivers, Steam, and Amnesia, and... it worked. I started adding programs, drivers, and utilities to make sure it would still work, and it did.

Now this is where it gets interesting.

I switched back to the SSD and started uninstalling programs that I suspected as being the culprit, but nothing worked. So I uninstalled EVERYTHING. Everything on the list of add/remove got removed (with the exception of this one SOB printer driver that won't go away). And it still. won't. work.

So I'm assuming that there is some driver or update lingering on my SSD system causing this.

I'm seriously considering just reinstalling my operating system and starting everything from scratch. It's not even about the game anymore at this point. I'm just determined to figure this out.

Unless you think there's an easy way to pinpoint what driver/update is causing this.

[plutomaniac]

So normally your Windows is installed on the SSD and you just reinstalled another copy of them at the HDD just to test if Amnesia would work. Right? So now, we can verify that the 13.1 drivers and your graphics card is fine. The problem must be somewhere at the operating system, an old corrupted video card driver residue, an option causing problems, some program/service etc...

It would indeed be great to find out what was causing this so that it can be added to the known problematic programs, but what exactly may be rather difficult to pinpoint unfortunately. You uninstalled every program so it's not them apparently. My guess would be broken drivers, residue especially causing conflicts. In general I would use:

1) Driver Sweeper v3.2.0 and select AMD only to clean residue files after uninstalling the drivers normally. Reboot and then a clean driver installation.
2) Do a system cleanup and registry error check via CCleaner + CCEnhancer. Yes, it may even be a registry corruption somewhere causing this.

[SadPanda]

Alright, I give up.

I tried steps 1 and 2 with no luck, and I also tried uninstalling every Windows update.

Whatever is going wrong, it seems like it will be easier at this point to start fresh and take note of what goes wrong when it goes wrong. I'm reinstalling the OS right now, so I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

[plutomaniac]

Exactly, that's for the best. Let me know if it works in general. As you already did, try with just drivers and game and then start installing your programs.

[SadPanda]

Oh wow...
It was the DPI scaling this whole time.

I installed Steam and Amnesia and went to run it, but got really confused when it still didn't work. Then I realized that I never changed any windows settings on the HDD run, so I set the DPI scaling back to 100% and BLAMO, the game worked. It can handle 125%, but 150% is when you get a warning saying "Some items might not fit on the screen" and the game refuses to play at that point.

In full screen mode, the intro screens will play as long as I don't move the mouse. The instant I do, it freezes. In windowed mode, I can move the mouse and browse the main menu, but when I try to load a new game, it freezes.

When I lower the DPI scaling, it works just fine in both modes.

So is this a new issue?

[plutomaniac]

Not exactly. Check Problem H: http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-3754.html

It is known to cause problems such as cropped edges but not the exact problem you had.

[SadPanda]

I would have never guessed that it would cause freezing, though. Cropped edges were the least of my concerns, so I never bothered to try that troubleshooting option.

I'm just glad I finally figured it out.

Thanks for all the help.