Basic troubleshooting

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a few things you should do once you run into a problem with War Thunder:

 

1. restart your system

some problems are not related to War Thunder itself but rather some service getting stuck, windows update is going to replace files

on the next start, files are locked by other programs/tools or some driver doesnt work properly after a system standby/resume etc

 

edit: cant stress this simple step enough ! many users use the stand-by option instead of shutting down the computer - while

this is quite comfortable because the system resumes out of this state within seconds there are still tools/services and drivers

which seem to have troubles with this and dont run stable or at full speed after a resume. a full reboot of the system solves this

 

2. run the launcher (or aces.exe) with administrator privileges

if your launcher cant update the files or isnt finishing the download this might be cause by the lack of permissions. you may run the

launcher (or the game directly via the aces.exe) with adminstrator privileges by right clicking either the EXE in the game folder or

the shortcut on the desktop -> then select 'run as administrator'... quite a few problems can be solved by running the applications

as administrator.

 

3. do a full file check

due to several reasons the files of the game might get corrupted or may be missing. so whenever you get an error message in the

game (or launcher) be sure that you do a full file check of the game files! to do this you just need to start the launcher -> go to the

laucher settings (wrench icon in the top right corner) -> click 'check files' on the middle left side of the launcher settings

 

4. check your anti virus software

check the logs of the anti virus for blocked files - add the War Thunder folder or at least the launcher.exe and aces.exe to the 

exception list of your anti virus (temporarily disabling the anti virus to see if that solves the problem might work too)

 

4.1 disable the game mode / silent mode of the anti virus software!

of course it is disturbing if you drop back to the desktop while playing just because the anti virus software thinks something

wrong is going on... but often enough the anti virus will just block the game without giving you any information if it is running

in game/silent mode - like this you might easily spend an hour or more to find the problem

 

5. check your firewall

if you start the game for the first time the firewall 'should' pop up a message that a new program is trying to access the internet 

giving you the option to either allow or deny the access. every now and then this just doesnt happen and by default the permission

is denied causing the game/program/tool no being able to run. especially after updates this might happen since the aces.exe is 

already on the list of programs - but since the aces.exe got changed it is a completely different executable for the firewall thus it

needs to be given the permission to access the internet again!

 

5.1 disable the game mode / silent mode of the firewall!

again... the firewall might silently block the access for either the launcher or the aces.exe because it is set to silent/game mode

thus no message is popping up asking for a new program trying to access the internet (happens in the Comodo for instance)

 

6. check your drivers

War Thunder is a game in development - every now and then changes will be made to the core systems of the game. even if the

game ran perfectly fine for months on your system it might crash or run slower when those improvments are implemented just because

your drivers are outdated and might not work all that well with the latest build of the game. especially the videocard drivers are very

important but dont forget the chipset drivers (outdated on about 80-90% of the systems !!!!), the soundcard drivers (outdated on

about 60-70% of the systems!) and the network interface card drivers (outdated on about 80% of the systems!)

 

6.1 there are tools to help you keeping your drivers up to date

i have to admit that i'm not a fan of tools which keep track of your drivers because they might fail and either identify the

components of the system wrong or update drivers which they arent supose to update (various reasons) but at least they can

give you an idea about what's going on and if you check the drivers before you install them and you are sure that they are the

correct ones those tools can make your life easier ^^ (just google for some of those tools and read their descriptions - i am 

running SlimDrivers every now and then to see if i miss the latest updates.

 

7. disable non-essential tools

some tools interfere with War Thunder and prevent it from starting, causing connection troubles or make it crash. yet again the game

might have run flawelessly for weeks/months and all of the sudden it's starting to fail - this might either be caused by the game itself

got updated and isnt working with the background tools currently installed or the background tool got updated and is causing trouble

with the current version of the game. tools which are (or have been known in the past) causing troubles are: Mando/Pando Media

Booster, MSI Afterburner, Overwolf, tools with any kind of overlay (including Fraps)...

 

edit: many mainboards and videocards come with some bundled tools to either maximise the performance or enhance the

energy savings - whilst the idea of that tools may be good they often cause troubles like game crashes or system instabilities.

try to disable them (or even uninstall them) to see if the problem still persists. tools which have been mentioned causing some

problems are for instance: Asus AI Suite (III), EVGA precision, Gigabyte Easytune, AsRock Extreme tuning...

 

8. unplug USB devices

there have been quite a few reports about certain USB devices (mainly gaming controllers like joysticks. gamepads, steeering wheels)

causing the FPS to periodically drop down to something like 5-15 FPS even though the game usually runs at 60-150FPS. so if you

experience sudden FPS losses (periodically) unplug as many USB devices as possible to see if the problem is gone. if so - try to 

identify the USB devices which is causing this problem by plugging them in one by one. once identified you might try to update the

drivers (or the firmware) of that specific device and write a bug report if this cant be fixed on your side.

 

9. change the screenmode, the resolution and the settings

of course some graphic problems may be caused by a wrong set resolution or the driver not really working with that screenmode.

same goes for the graphics settings (cogwheel icon next to the graphics presets in the launcher). so if something isnt looking the way

it suppose to you should always check the settings and maybe fiddle about them a little bit. turning off the anisotropy setting for instance

may help if you got lines between the ground textures.

 

10. rename/delete the profile.config.blk

if your controls are messed up or the changes you make to the ingame settings wont save so you have to redo them every time you

start the game your profile.config.blk might be borked. in this case you can rename/delete it to force the game to create a new (default)

config file on the next start. the file is located in c:\users\{windows user name}\Documents\My Games\Warthunder\saves (or just

Documents\My Games\Warthunder\saves from the user folder on the desktop)

 

11. copy the game folder to a different location

sometimes not even running the launcher/game with administrator privileges (paragraph 2) will allow the launcher/game to access or

modify certain files in the folder - this might be due to some restrictions of the operating systems =/ in several cases the people had to 

move the game folder to a different location to be able to access those files. the game will run pretty much from any location so you

may just move it to C:\games\War Thunder for instance (or even a different drive)

 

edit: often the launcher gets stuck on an update and just hands out an 'Error 5: Access denied' message (or something like that)

this may be caused by the launcher not being able to update itself. in this case it often helps to close the launcher - go to the

installation folder and rename the launcher.exe to launcher1.exe (or anything else but launcher.exe) - then start the launcher1.exe

(with administrator privileges) and it should be able to run the update... after a successful update you may delete the launcher1.exe