@PSWii60-Fanboy: PS3 version, I must add.

PSWii60-Fanboy

disabled connection and it seemed to fix the problem of endless loading screens and freezups in game.

hopefully it's a temporary work around.

Maudite

Stuck on loading screen, quit out, disable Internet Connection, reload, loaded instantly.

It's definitely a problem with the game looking up multiplayer servers and it timing out as opposed to getting a response saying the server is down (because I've been able to play previously when multi is just not available,) so it keeps trying and gets stuck in a loop.

PSWii60-Fanboy

This does NOT work for me. I have disable the internet, unpluged the ethernet cord, turned off the router and even the modem and my game still freezes. IT SUCKS! lol oh well I've gotten pretty far playing only 10-20 mins at a time before it freezes.

Stikasasn

Technically sound version my ass... :D (flame shield)

vx2

[kotaku.com]

... I guess it helps some. Not me.

Camann

Eh, thanks. After 15 hours of smooth playing I suddenly got the same problem as all the others and now I can't even play without it freezing on the loading screen. Hopefully this will fix it. (haven't been able to get online play working anyway)

ZeroBlitz

@Cruithne:

I think that might be it. I've had no problems untill today after playing whilst downloading from the PS Store.

Ajay

i actually had to do the same problem for MLB 07, one day it just stopped working whenever it was connected to the internet

zeropoint.0

This seems to work mostly for the people who get stuck at the loading screen. Supposedly it happens when the last thing you did was play online ( for a few people though).
But disabling PSN does help if your game shows that it's loading, but does not.

brennan

I have done this to fix the freezing issues in NHL 08, which works as well.

mgy

@Cruithne: Judging by our experiences the 'fragmented files' theory is probably another reason for crashes. I can't comment of the PSN, but it sounds like others have had their issue fixed by it.

Anemone

Yay for SomethingAwful!

Now, if only these comments and every forum in the world was regulated like SA! =(

WingZero987

My game started freezing last nght, after four days of heavy play.
What changed?
I downloaded some stuff from the PSN store while i was playing, that's the only thing I did differently, and the game froze, so maybe there is a link.

Cruithne

this would make sense. I have the 360 version and have had trouble recently with my router, and when my router drops the connection, the game would freeze

kathartik

@Fulgurator: hehe.
Never underestimate the power of percussive maintenance...

half-beast

Sooo..... no multiplayer until the patch?

Vidril

If that doesn't work, just kick the hell out of your PS3. IT will work, It's a basic comedy fact.

Fulgurator

YAY! I just got this problem for the first time, game would stay on load screen for ages I'm about 15 hours in, tried reinstalling etcetera, and am so fucking relieved I can't stop smiling, thank you, this makes me appreciate the game so much more!

valleyshrew

It actually kinda makes sense. When the mp works, I don't even have to be connected to choose a game through the phone. I was very impressed by that little touch (I say that every second for GTA4).

slomo788

Now if only there was a fix for Niko's robotic movement.

Kanik

Doesn't fix my problem.

Maldron

Unfortunately Live wasn't the issue with my 360, as it continued to lock up even after removing the HDD and not signing in.

e30b27

im glad i havent had this problem, but thanks for reporting Owen! You're an alright guy.

pandafresh

Whelp, reinstalling fixed my issue, it seems. Then again mine only started after I messed with files on my HDD.

Anemone

This worked for me. It was freezing, then I disabled my internet connection, then it wasn't freezing.

superevilcube

Worked for my friend. I guess since rockstar know the problem now they can patch it... i'm eager to play my friends online but simply cant lol..

stargateheaven

Aren't Gamespot and GameFAQ's forums fused together... meaning there the same forum... right? o.o?

SanjiX

@Anemone: i read on the ps3 fourms if you go to internet options disable internet connection, load the game and save the game you can then go back and put internet back on and no problems.. i "heard" this so not sure 100% fix

Crazyeyez15

And peace was returned to Liberty city

GOD

Mine just started locking up this morning after uninstalling a bunch of videos on my HDD. I'm reinstalling GTA at the moment in the hopes of getting it to work... We'll see. I'd hate to have to avoid psn while playing.

Anemone

MMmm called it?

[kotaku.com]

What confuses me is that isn't this one of the 12 steps to hell and hasn't that already been shown to not work?

Jelster

I thought the internet agreed to ignore Gamespot/Faqs due to the Kane & Lynch Payola saga. The uncodified rules of the internet must be adhered to.

I just started this game and I've got to say: I'm not really liking it, that much. It feels like GTA4: nothing has changed. It's just wearing a beautiful coat.

Malvolio the Magician

In other words, just unplug your ethernet cable. Mine freezed last night and unplugging the ethernet cable fixes that.

Playstation

I had my first freeze last night loading up a saved game. It would get past the introductory loading screens to the point where the text would indicate the save file being loaded and then.. then... nothing.

Several reboots later did not solve anything. Turning the power switch off on the system seems to rectify this at least last night, but we'll see if it continues.

What's humorous to me is that I grabbed the ps3 version simply because I am sick of stability issues with my 360 hardware.. (3rd one).

malachii

@Malvolio the Magician: I like to stay out of the console wars by fighting for all three sides! I'm like a mercenary except I spend money instead of make it.

PSWii60-Fanboy

This tends to work for the non-launch PS3's. This was tried on the launch PS3's when the problem was first encounted, and did nothing.

If you're getting a freeze once in a blue moon, its not the same thing as the big problem, namely, a majority of launch PS3 owners can't go more than 15 seconds before the game locks-up, without fail, every time.

If your game freezes after 3 hours of play, you are not being affected by the problem. That's just plain-old Rockstar system instability.

SnakeCL

@PSWii60-Fanboy:

More like consumer fanboy. Amirite?

Malvolio the Magician

The problem I had that started just today was that the game wouldn't load. It'd just get stuck at the intro and display the loading subtitle in the bottom right corner. Didn't freeze though.

Signing out of PSN solved it. Still, a stupid bug that should be ironed out ASAP.

Candlejack

@Vileyaser: You said it, total BULL.

lazarus3000

Ctrl+F "bork"
Text not found.
I grow sad.
Allow me: Bork bork bork!

Anyway, good to see there's a somewhat reliable temporary fix.

Wolfers

@Elderwulf: Hi, my console has been doing exactly the same as yours, freezing during the flashing loading text and then shutting down and re-starting when I try to exit the game. I have been taking my console off line by signing out of the PSN network before I fire up GTA, hope this helps, I have the 40 GB version so not sure if this will work with your 60 giga.

lazarus3000

In a china shop (;

Vileyaser

It works for me
damn
now i cant play multiplayer
THIS IS BULL

Vileyaser

I live in Finland and have the 40 GB Euro PS3. I got GTA IV yesterday and today it froze up during the initial loading screen. It did this two or three times. Now, however, I sign out of the PSN network before I fire up GTA and so far this seems to be working, I have had no further freeze ups so far today. Hope this gets patched though, bit of a pain in the ass to have to go offline before every game.

lazarus3000

Well mne just started working again.
The fix of disabling the PSN seemed to work.
By the way, I've had my 360 for a year and have had no problems with that, so far.

Cruithne

@Jamo: Xbox 360 users are having similar issues. 1 out of 3 of my friends that have it for the 360 has this problem.

Elderwulf

this is one trend i'd like to see go away...like...forever. games that ship broken, it's the goof of the industry. so rockstar had 1000 people working on this game and this problem got passed the play testers? or were take two so desperate for monies that they said "to hell with it" and shipped it busted? whatever the circumstances, it sucks. thank goodness for MGO beta...which ironically runs better than GTAIV and its not even a finished product.

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

My game keeps freezing when I load for the first time. Though I would not really call it freezing since the loading text keeps flashing. I can exit the game, but it restarts(cuts controller off, have to login) the PS3, so it knows that the application is in a "Not Responding" state. I've never had it lock up during play or cut-scenes though. Seems to only happen 50% of the time. I have a 60GB PS3 that I bought after they dropped the price.

Elderwulf

Ok wait, the GTA IV/system lockup issue was to do with the PS3? Bwahhahahaha! I'll concede that I wasn't really paying attention until I saw this article and most likely I'll be called a fanboy for this comment, but I can't resist. Now all the PS3 homies are getting a taste of what its like to have your system just stop working. Pardon me please, its the schadenfreude talking.

Jamo

@zeropoint.0: I don't know if 07 and 08 suffered the same problem, but yeah, I was getting lockups like crazy on MLB 08. I ended up switching from wireless to wired connections when I wanted to play online. The problem for me was that the connection kept dropping.

Developers: wait until people choose to enter multiplayer to start sniffing for connections, 'kay?

jallen

This Disabling doesn't work that gamespot put on their site. it still freezes on intro and if i skip the intro and pause the game to disable the flikering and auto save it freezes then also. now i wait for a patch.

grkdotnot

@Maldron: Did you unplug the cable?

Playstation

A friend of mine usng a PS3 for playing GTA did not survied the PS3 lockdown...so i told him this "fix". He told me it worked.

VeNoMmx

Basically to see SA you need 10bux =0

Darknight630

Good news if that is causing the problems. Then they could release a fix easily.

p4ddym1607

I have a 60 gig PS3 and confirm, at least in my expierence, this method fixes up the lock up issue.

Hopefully they can fix this soon so I can check out the online function sooner than latter.

doing

After 22 hours of play I finally experience one of the bugs which is when the save game wouldn't load. Disabling my internet connection solved it right away and now I'm back causing mayhem in Liberty City. This game is really good. The problem definitely lies with the game trying to access the internet during the game. I'm not sure why the game needs the internet other than when playing multi-player. Well, I'm not planning of playing the multi-player mode until I finish the story anyway so back to the game I go.

thegunshow

Well, I'd been wondering why I hadn't experienced this lockup. I guess I haven't had my PS3 plugged into the internet while playing yet. I live in a dorm, and we only have two internet cable sockets so my PS3 and computer share one depending on what's being used.

Cathaoir

@lazarus3000: Yah, sorry failed to mention that this works for me too. I figured this might be the case as the hard drive light stops flashing, but the internet connection light is blinking away when it is freezing. So to everyone else as well, if your game does lock up, make sure your hard drive light is off before cutting it off to avoid corruption of data.

Elderwulf

Wow with all these problems I'm actualy glad i didn't buy this and don't really care about this game :/

After 0 hours of play, my xbox 360 version never froze on me so I win hahahah

D Mitsuki

I never experience the lockup and then suddenly it happened twice. I think it's caused when you have a background download going that destablizes it. Thats what I think happened with me.

DrXym

I was about 30 hours into the game when I started receiving free/loading issues. Logging out of PSN did seem to fix it for me and I've put another six hours into the game since then.

Deviation59

This totally does not help the people who cannot get past the intro cinematic / 5 seconds of gameplay (if they skip the cinematic). If you look at the 12 step fix that was posted, you will see this is a part of it. This does not help me play on my US Launch 20GB system.

severeon

Well, hopefully people won't loose their game saves.
...
As a non sequitur, I started my GTA experience last night and 6 hours later, I must say I'm loving it. Now that I've slept, I get some pesky chores out of the way and I'll have at it again :D Good times!

okenny :)

Who in their right mind would trust tech support from Something Awful?

Wookiee1

Me and my friend both started locking up/getting stuck at loading after we registered at the Social Club. Not signing into PSN fixed the problem though.

Vodun

I just fixed mine by copying the save files to a memory stick, deleting them from the hard drive, and copying them back over.

noire

I have 80gb launch console and disabling wireless network got me back in just fine...

gamergoo

Hmm, I'm still going to continue to wait till a patch is possibly put out.

Oh, look at that: another subtle propping of SA trash on Kotaku...

Jest

I suppose Rockstar should get a lot of blame for this, but I think people have to realize this game is selling millions of copies and we don't know how widespread the intro freeze and this random freeze is; even 0.1% is in the 1000s and 1% is in the 10s of 1000s. A lot of people had no freezing issues at ALL even when connected so it's not that straightfoward a bug. For the ones that have the intro freeze, it is the worst because so far there hasn't been a "fix" that actually fixes that and you can't get anywhere in the game at all. this fix seems to be for those having random freezes. Again hopefully R* figures it out and issues a patch to fix both issues.
I wonder why the x360 community haven't been as vocal about this problem. Seems there are a lot less reports going in of x360 freezing issues.

stopcrazypp

I disable my wireless network connection and haven't had a single lock up since then.

skankingfool

I'm just here to congratulate zimzombie for the awesome image.

Bork Bork BANG!

Evil Tortie's Mom

Works for me. When I start my PS3, I interrupt the sign-in to the PSN. I can then load up GTA IV fine. Although, if I try to play multiplayer, the game freezes when it logs in.

Tarthus

I just retried over and over and got in on exactly the 4th try the last three times i played.

jarjarwang

funny thing is that this is also the solution to the framerate drops in Assassin's Creed in Jerusalem.
it probably has a common root.

coladict

i've only had one lockup but since then I've been playing with internet connection disabled. i'd rather be safe than sorry really..

pharcotix

@jarjarwang:
Got into what?
A multiplayer gamee?

Vileyaser

This worked for me too. After playing this all week with no problems I find it strange that it would lock up today.

Rockstar get this #$%# together.

WolfGod

@Playstation: Or hey, just choose "Disable Internet Connection" in Network Settings. That's what it's there for.

I can also testify this works fine.

Youlikeyams

I just did this and *gasp* I think it worked! I was ale to play through a bunch of mission consecutively without a single freeze (knocks on wood). Now we need a fix and not a workaround.

Barbara

Actually, the game isn't looking for multiplayer servers or anything like that.

Before Something Awful picked up on it someone in the official Playstation forums actually found that the game is sending packets to the Social Club. Ever notice sometimes when you plug in your PS3 and your internet isn't hooked to it that sometimes it will still be trying to "log in"?

Well, because of this system quirk the game is also trying to send information to the Social club (you know, so that your single player times and achievements will be seen on the internet) but the game nor the system seems to be able to distinguish the fact that nothing is getting through.

SO! what its doing is slamming the cache over and over again with attempted website searches and then eventually fills up, locks down, and the whole thing goes "splat".

The user on the Playstation forums also noted that whenever the Social Club is down and unavailable that it will cause major freezing as well.

He managed to find this out using the Linux OS and tracking the packets and seeing what was being pinged every two minutes.

So, its not really multiplayer....it's the social club

Aurvant

The game seems to save mulitiple times whenever i actually save it. making the next time i play lock-up on me... i delete them all but one. and it works fine while connected online.

CancerMan

I must be one of the lucky few. I have my 60 GB and have yet to lock up on the game. There are a couple two second pauses, I think when the game uploads stuff or looks for games on the PSN, but that's about it.

It works great otherwise.

Well, I guess it did have one lockup on load when I first started playing it. It messed up and got stuck during a save, I think, so I reset the PS3. It wouldn't load the first time, and crashed back to the XMB. Once more, I started it up, and it's worked fine since then.

Poor form on Rockstar's part, but the rest of the game is so awesome, it's hard to be angry about it. Just get it fixed in a reasonable amount of time, I'll be fine.

/cops and crooks
//free mode is almost more fun

PapaBear434

Must be the main reason, my friend got GTAIV and he doesn't have internet hooked up at all to the PS3. (yeah, i know, retarded.) But anyways, he never had a single problem with any lockups, and he's running on a 60GB PS3.

RTW

Last night, I fired up the game on my PS3 and waited for it to load from the game save. (It does this automatically.) And I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, after ten minutes, I rebooted. Same damn thing happened. No way for me to enter the game, because it doesn't give you a menu before it just starts loading.

On a lark, the next time I rebooted I simply signed out of PSN. (This story wasn't up yet, I just thought I'd try it.)

Fired up the game and it loaded fine. Took about 20 seconds and I was playing again.

There is definitely something amiss with the way Rockstar is handling the network in this game. It's like they've made no allowances for network problems. The game always assumes the network is working properly, and will sit there waiting for it forever if it doesn't get a response from a server somewhere. Either that, or the networking itself is borked.

I don't personally like the way you're just thrown into the game from bootup. I want a menu and I want to be able to choose multiplayer from that menu, and if I choose the single-player game, I want no network. I think this attempt at trying to tie everything together and make it all seamless has just ensured that any single problem with any single aspect of the game or the network has the potential to destroy everything.

The one positive is that it doesn't *seem* like this would be too hard to fix. I know they're not going to give us me the menu that I want, but just making it so the game doesn't check the network until you actually select a network function - and then setting a timeout - doesn't seem like it should be that difficult.

badasscat

I experienced an inability to load an auto-saved game today. Would start the game and just get stuck loading as it went to move from the animated pictures into the mission. It just sat there for 10 minutes 'loading' with the missions name - I forget which one. Tried 2-3 times, each one resulting in a required 'hard' reset of the PS3.

Remembered reading about the network cable thing... so I tried it... WHAM straight into the game and away I go again. FFS how was this NOT caught in play-testing.

RogueSquid

FWIW, you can see the other pages... they just have ads pushing the content off your low resolution screens. :D

CZroe

@Youlikeyams: Thats true, but for me it's easier, faster and more convenient that way.

Playstation

I figured this out on my own yesterday. I have a launch PS3 and it would not load up my game. I'm definitely blaming multi-player as it was the mode that was last played prior to starting the freeze bug on my console.

fquick

How does this even work? Seriously, interested now.

dunnace

@Lanhoj:

Funny, all my other games seem to work just fine on PSN, barring Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. I guess I figured it was just developers.

Silly me. It must have been Sony, not the makers of the game who wrote the net code.

PapaBear434

so the solution is to just play the single player? LoL

that's one way to down play the importance of DLC ... by not even being able to get online to get it to begin with.

way to go Sony, way to go.

Lanhoj

I got the game today. Just finished installed it and now it stuck on "starting new game" screen.

Is it locking up?

HobbaHobba

I think it's a multitude of issues honestly because while signing out of PSN has allowed me to play longer I still receive crashes.

And for Owen and every other Kotaku writer don't count your chickens before they hatch. You're doing gamers like me a disservice when your subject claims the issue is fixed - even though it's written as an open ended question. I don't want Rockstar or Sony/MS to think for a moment that the issue has been resolved with some workaround. The fact of the matter is that they are going to have to release a patch.

Barbara

worked for me, but i wanted to play online :(

=O

Disabling my PS3's internet connection worked... GTA4 is now playable... Single-player, at least :-/

Tzepish

Erm, didnt i say this on thursday..3 days ago? Oh well. : )

UFO

Hmmm, my 360 locked up at the same spot as many of the PS3's seem to be, during the flashing text on a loading screen. However, after that point it continued to lock up just minutes into any game, not just GTA4. So I assumed it was a hardware failure and sent it in. Wonder if GTA really had anything to do with it, or if perhaps it was just a coincidence that it started at that point?

e30b27

Thanks for posting this, Owen. The game started locking up on me last night after working fine for the first 7 hours of playtime. Sure enough, disabling PSN fixed the problem. It's interesting to note that my game never once froze until I exited a multiplayer match for the first time. After that I couldn't play single player or multiplayer for 5 minutes without the PS3 freezing.

Engineer_This

BEFORE YOU DISABLE THAT, TRY UPDATING THE FIRMWARE FOR YOUR ROUTERS...

Enigma_20XX

Best GTA PS3 Freeze Fix? Buy the 360 version.

I kid, I kid. I know how touchy we are about that here. You know I almost got the PS3 version because of the texture pop-in but 360 edged it out due to the fact that I don't really know anyone on PSN. Anyway, with my luck I would have been one of the gamers who would have suffered the whole lock-up thing.

dnez

I'm sure this has been mentioned:

If you get the game to play after you install the first time on your PS3 (I have an 80Gb) but then it hangs on the loading screen after you turn the PS3 off, then try disabling Automatic PSN sign-in. This fixed my problem right up, and I can still get into PSN in-game and play online.

Thanks for the post though, it solved my frustrations!

der13manner

Thank you for this post. I'm around 30%, turned on the PS3 and GTA4 would not load. Turned off the network connection and it worked. Saved the game, turned the net back on, and was good to go. No problems since.

will52

I've only told EVERYONE that has had this problem to do so. I wish I coulda got recognition for this 5 days ago. Hell, it was locking up my system today, which was the first time it's ever happened to me. It's akin to MLB 08 locking up at the start screen.

Sollus

3 days of play and it's still playing fine on my 60GB using wired internet through a router with 4 other devices.

I have not logged in to a multiplayer match yet so maybe that's the root of all freezing?

ArcaneDevice

Yeah this has worked for me so far. I can play non stop without PSN but if I am in game and try to sign in it immediately crashes. On the bright side I can still listen to the radio if I am in a car:)

Guttlesswonder

I turned off autosave, media server connection, the internet connection entirely, and rumble and still get two-three seconds pauses occasionally. I noticed it is most common when police cars are involved, which leads me to believe that the "defragmentation" theory is true.

kylo4

seems my theory was correct after all. it makes sense as during the day there's a huge server load as every1 is trying to jump on at once. i guess the game auto-logs you in to MP when you initially load up to play SP

kw4k

Disabling the PSN network has totally worked for me

Pay_Me_Or_Pay_Me_No_Attention

I found that deleting the profile save file before launching the game works for me.

Seturon

@SnakeCL:
A majority of launch systems eh? I wonder where you got that information.

And yes this trick works on launch systems.. do not be confused as there are TWO freezing bugs.. this only fixes the one where the game hangs endlessly as it loads your last save file.. this does not fix the freeze that happens during the first cinematic.

Bastard11

Thanks for posting! It fixed my issues too. Too bad that playing multiplayer will be out of the question for now...

verbalins

@severeon: Worked on my 40GB (with backwards compatibility intact).

As always with such fixes, it appears one's mileage may vary.

Deuce

Wow, I feel vindicated. I said this is exactly the scenario back on Tuesday launch day when the first reports started. Too bad I'm not big in the industry and my post in the original article here on kotaku was not made the headline that same Tuesday. You all would have been playing with zero lock ups like me for the past week. On Tuesday afternoon, I was back online and no Freezes since. 60GB here. Cheers.

MetiQluzZ

The game has maybe frozen once for me (just after talking to Elizabeta... and the other time I suppose it was a loading glitch... in the subway with Packie and the next waypoint didn't come up, they just stood there with their guns like idiots. restarting the console fixed both problems), nothing severe... the autosave feature is a lifesaver.

Hibikino

"Update: Thanks to commenter zimzombie for the swell borked image redo. He's right, Chef totally needs a gun."

That is correct.

Chef

GTAIV for the PS3 froze on me while starting a new game. It froze after finishing the initial installation and then automatically attempting to create a new game. I wasn't even able to get into the game at all because of this freeze. Deleting and reinstalling the game did nothing. I had a couple downloads on my PSN queue, so I finished those and tried again. After installing the game again, I immediately exited the game back to the PS3's main menu. I then restarted the game. The new game was created successfully without a freeze up and everything works fine now. I did not have to disconnect my ethernet cable or disconnect from the PSN. Hope this helps someone.

WeakPoint

I have tried this solution today and i disabled my internet connection from the network settings, uninstalled and reinstalled the game data. However, unfortunately it has not fixed the problem for me at all on my 60GB launch PS3. the game still freezes on me every 10 minutes or so during the game play or cut scenes and i am like 6 percent through the game already. Suffice to this solution or the multi player/social club is not the problem. in fact, i have replaced my disk once with eb games just to make sure it wasn't a disk problem and i still have freeze problems even though my first copy of the disc and the current replaced one i have never had any scratches so far on them. :-(

sceeuk

** mine only freezes when i log in on to psn when im in the game.

-It works fine when you log in from the main menu, before even starting up the game.

ilxhypa

Turning off Internet access doesn't help. I just re-tried the Gamestop 12 steps. I can get as far as trying to turn off stuff in the game (vibration, auto-save, etc.). As I'm doing that it locks up. And I can only get that far by skipping the intro video (by pressing 'X'). This sucks ;(

flynnt

@Anemone:

Reinstalling only fixed my lockups for a short time. After a little while, it started locking up again.

I had to disable a lot of stuff, but it is working better so far. I suspect that internet connection, or autosave, or subtitles is the problem. It might be a combination of them.

Lokupz

The lockups are happening on both 360 and PS3, by the way.

On my PS3, I seem to have fixed it *crosses fingers*.

I turned off autosave, turned off subtitles, turned off PS3 internet, turned off PS3 messageboard, turned of PS3 screensaver, turned off controller vibration.

Lokupz

Another fix for the Intro Scene lockup is to through the XMB and go in GAME DATA UTILITY (Note: not SAVE DATA UTILITY) and delete the GTA system file. It's going to take another 7 to 10 minutes to install the System file, but you'll be able to play again.

Cron-Z

The 360 version doesn't have such an easy fix. I have tried it without internet, without Hard drive, without internet and HDD, I cleared the cache, I have tried a gold XBL account and silver account, I don't have any third party accessories connected to my 360, my 360 has good ventilation and checked for any dust or blockages that could prevent cooling, I made another profile, changed display to 480p and 1080i, turned auto-save off in GTA, stood the console vertically then horizontally, deleted all GTA IV save info off HDD, used a wired controller, wireless controller, had both wireless and wired connected at the same time, exchanged another copy of GTA IV to no avail, used my GTA copy on another 360 console which did work, used a working GTA IV disc on my console which didn't work (so I have tried 3 GTA IV discs), I played Oblivion yesterday for 90 minutes on my 360 without problems,and I played Rainbow Six Vegas 2 yesterday for 30 minutes without problems. With all of that it still freezes within 5 minutes of playing GTA IV on my 360...

Sirhc311

I don't think the lockup issues have anything to do with PSN - GTA IV worked without a hitch on my 60GB PS3 (purchased 12/06) for 4 days straight, then suddenly wouldn't load on start-up (it wouldn't move off the mission load screen, though the system clearly wasn't frozen, as the PS button was still operational). Initially, removing my most recent save to a memory card and starting up with the prior save fixed the problem, but then it froze in-game during a high-speed run. Upon reboot, the game again would not move past the mission load screen. Whether I was on PSN or not, and whether or not I had a download running made no difference. What I did notice, however, was that this was acting an awful lot like a DISC READ PROBLEM. Sure enough, removing, cleaning, and reinserting the BD got it running like a charm. The following morning, though, the same thing happened and reinserting the BD didn't help at first. So . . . I tried the old PS2 trick of putting the console on its side, and voila, everything started working like a charm. Disc read problems would explain why the lockups (and ostensible "fixes") are so inconsistent across consoles.

sadnut

I have a 60GB launch system and I just got this game via gamefly rental.

When I first put the game in all I was able to do was install the game data and save file, then it would get stuck on the "Starting a new game..." screen. I had already heard about the lock up issue and I assumed this was related.

I went ahead and forced a quit out of the game and went to delete the game file and saved game file. I also deleted trailer video's and old game data files for games I no longer owned. Problem not resolved.

I did more research and followed the 12 step program (although the final 3 steps did not appear necessary as my problem was resolved by following the first 9). I was able to begin playing the game.

Since the main reason I was interested in GTA4 was for the interesting Multiplayer scenarios, I decided I might re-enable the internet connection and try out some multiplayer. I attempted to join a game and when the connection to the game was lost, about 30 seconds after I finished loading back into the single player game, i was locked up.

This tells me the issue for me is related to the internet connection. To be honest I haven't tried it since because I was disapointed, but I assume it will work just fine if I unplug my Ethernet cable.

If the 12 step program is not working for you, that is truly a bummer. But for many people the problem is entirely related to the internet connection.

ankhenaten

I had the Intro Scene lockup on my four times in a row. I simply removed the game from my PS3, loaded another game (Guitar Hero III in this situation), quit the game, put GTA back in and it worked.

Cron-Z

My game started freezing after a about 13 hours a gameplay. I logged out of PSN and single player worked fine..I waited 2 days and tried multiplayer with my fingers crossed. And for the next 4 hours i was happily reaking havoc and causing anarchy with numerous other GTA sociopaths! I love Rockstar!

GreaterHater

@Tzepish: Spoke too soon. Disabling the internet allowed me to get into the game, but now it's crashing about every half hour.

Tzepish

the way i did it is I signed out of PSN, then started the game, and when I went to multiplayer it would just prompt for a sign in, and I'd hit OK, and then i'd be signed back in and it would be fine.

leimeisei

Mine just started locking up on me this morning. I get to the mission title loading stage and then nothing. I can play without an ethernet cable plugged in.

Attempting re-installation at this point. Seems like bad networking code.

warlock7