So, I've had to reinstall NWN1 a couple of times now due to this strange crashing issue that always seems to pop up sooner or later. The first time it did, I had launched the Neverwinter Nights launcher instead of the direct executable, and clicked "play". It crashed. After that I tried the direct executable, and it was crashing too. At first I thought it was because I tried using the launcher, but after a reinstall, I requested my online keys, replaced the cdkey configuration and tried launching as normal... and it's crashing on launch again! Made sure I used the Kingmaker setup to validate the new keys, still crashing... so I'll drop my specs here.


OS: Windows XP Service Pack 3 (yeah, I know, I know...)

Memory: 3GB DDR RAM (Yes, the first DDR.)

CPU: Pentium 4 3 GHZ (unsure if single or dual core... god, I hope dual core)

Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4600 series, legacy card and has no driver support any longer.



Can provide other specs if needed. I hope I can resolve this without another reinstall, it's becoming annoying at this point. I really wanted to go online on some of those roleplay servers...

Have you checked the support page? Often you can find the solution there. One of the suggestions given for frequent crashes at startup is to install the June 2010 DirectX runtime package. Try that and see if that helps.

Year old bump, but it's worth noting this has been solved. Oddly enough, the solution was just changing the name of the game executable and running it directly. I don't know why I have to do this, but I have no issues after doing so.

This year old topic can be marked as solved, and I hope someone else benefits from this solution that has the issue of the game crashing on launch.


EDIT: I cannot mark my own post as the solution. That is why I ask it be marked.

yes just to keep this bumped. A simple solution that might help new players who get an instant crash in windows when trying to launch the game. Simply rename your nwnmain executable to something else (I just renamed it to Neverwinter) and run it directly from the exe and it worked. Hopefully this simple fix will help others who get an instant crash when trying to run the game.

Wish this was included in sticky to keep it up top.

Oh thank you so much for sharing this solution! I tried so many solution proposals now and none worked in a good way (some allowed me to sometimes get the game running). I was nearly to quit trying and then I found this thread.

And as you mentioned: After simply renaming the exe, I also got no errors and crashes anymore! THANK YOU :-)

If changing the executable name causes it to work, you have some kind of NWN settings in your GPU drivers.

In the drivers for each card, there are options to set different GPU settings for each application/game.

Often there are defaults for a lot of games.

Changing the name means the defaults for your game somehow got screwed up.

You should be able to find the nwnmain in the list and reset any items that have an override.

http://www.howtogeek.com/175281/how-to-force-graphics-options-in-pc-games-with-nvidia-amd-or-intel-graphics/

This is a good hint. However, I checked for my AMD settings and it turned out that I do not have a single applicatin specific setting. At least I could not find any... But it does not matter as renaming worked and NWN is the only game I have with this strange issue.