Does GTA Online constantly keep on crashing after some time of gameplay? When doing a heist, mission, or just changing your clothes in the game, does it unceremoniously crash to your desktop? This guide will show you why you are facing this issue and how you can sort it out.
Since the launch of GTA V in 2013, the Rockstar GTA Online game is still a hot cake and one of the best-selling and popular titles out there today. GTA V could have been enough for most players, but Rockstar went an extra mile and introduced an expansive online mode as well.
However, many GTA Online users report that it crashes to desktop when they try to play it on their PC. Most of the time, the problem occurs when users are with other players in a world or playing in solo sessions. Before letting you in on some fixes for this issue, let’s find out why GTA Online is crashing on your PC.
Why does GTA Online keep crashing on my PC?
In recent years, Rockstar has received a lot of criticism regarding the GTA Online crashing problem. However, we’ve found there are a few reasons that give rise to the issue, such as:
- Your graphic card driver is out-of-date or corrupt.
- CPU is overheating and causing the game to crash intermittently.
- You have not updated the GTA Online game for quite some time.
- Your graphic settings are not synchronized with GTA Online.
- Your PC paging file is too small to compensate for the GTA Online game resources.
How do I fix the GTA Online crashing on PC?
If the GTA Online game often crashes on your PC, try the following troubleshooting steps.
Update graphic card drivers
Missing, corrupt, or outdated graphic card driver is the most common reason GTA Online crashes on your PC. Therefore, before trying out other troubleshooting steps in this guide, go to your graphics card manufacturer’s website and download the latest driver.
Afterward, click on the download launcher file to install the driver and reboot your PC. Next, check if the GTA Online game runs well on your system.
Troubleshoot CPU overheating issues
GTA Online game will often crash if your computer CPU is overheating as it may not meet the recommended system requirements to play the game. As a result, your CPU uses the resources to their limits to keep the game running. Therefore, either upgrade your system or buy a new one.
Furthermore, your PC can overheat if its cooling fan is running slow or malfunctioning or the cooling ducts are dirty and obstructing the airflow. So inspect your computer, clean the vents, or repair/replace the cooling fan.
Update GTA Online
GTA Online developers release patches to fix the bugs and errors in the game. So if the game is crashing quite often, make sure that you are running the latest version.
To install the latest GTA Online patch on Rockstar Games Launcher, go to Settings and click on “My installed games.” Next, choose GTA Online and move the mouse over to the “Verify game file integrity” option. Now choose the “Verify integrity” option to update the game to its latest patch.
Steam users can update GTA Online in the following way.
- Launch Steam client and head to the Library section at the top of the screen.
- Search for GTA Online game and go to its properties.
- Now click on the “Local Files” tab and select the “Verify integrity of game files” option.
- Next, Steam will verify and update the GTA Online game automatically.
Increase page file size
A few GTA Online game users fixed the crashing issue by increasing the page file size on their Windows PC. To do this:
- Go to Control Panel –> System and Security, and click on the Systems option.
- Select the Advanced tab and click on the Setting option under the Performace menu.
- Next, click on the Advanced tab and select “Change” under the “Virtual memory” option.
- Select the partition on which you have installed the GTA Online game.
- Click on “Custom size” and set it to a larger size (a 5GB increase is recommended).
- Finally, launch the GTA Online game on your PC and see if the issue persists.
Launch PC with customized startup services
Reducing the Windows startup service and ending unnecessary tasks frees up your PC’s computing power and often fixes various issues with GTA Online game. To do this:
- Type msconfig on the Windows Run dialog box.
- Select the General tab, click on the “Selective startup” option and uncheck “Load startup items.”
- Next, click on the Service tab, scroll to the bottom and check the “Hide all Microsoft services” box.
- Now select “Disable all” and go to the Startup tab on the top to disable startup programs as well.
- Launch Task Manager and end all running programs and unnecessary processes.
- Finally, reboot your PC and verify that you can play GTA Online game without facing the crashing issue.
How to adjust GTA Online graphics settings?
If your graphics settings are set to High, it can improve the GTA Online game performance but may trigger crashing issues. Therefore, adjust the graphics settings to Normal and see if that helps with the problem on hand.
To do this, go to the GTA Online Settings and select the Graphics option from the menu. Now change the Grass Quality, Reflection Quality, Shader Quality, Shadow Quality, and Texture Quality settings to Normal.
Furthermore, you can enable the VSync feature to fix the crashing problem. Go to the GTA Online Settings option and then click on Graphics. Next, scroll to the bottom and turn on the VSync feature. Afterward, launch the game and verify the fix.
Conclusion
We hope that this guide helped you explore the causes and fixes for the “GTA Online keeps crashing” issue. If the troubleshooting steps fail to work, try running the game on an updated Windows 8.1 PC until the devs fix the problem on Windows 10. Many GTA Online users report that despite the Windows 8 annoying interface, the game runs flawlessly on it.
