GP4 Troubleshooting Guide

And here comes the great time when something runs bad, where GP4 looks bad, is crashing back to desktop or is even restarting Windows.
How strange! But what can I do? Well, so many things in fact but I doubt any file will ever cover every problems whatever the tries of their authors.
I will anyhow try to answer most of the (so) common troubles you should or will encounter with GP4.
Anyhow, be sure to search for the Official GP4 FAQ on the net as this file will give you official answers to many game troubles and especially with controllers.



GP4 in general

GP4 shortcut on my desktop is not launching GP4
- This usually happens after having installed official GP4 Patch v9.6. Delete current shortcut and recreate it and it will be solved.
- The other explication could be you displaced the gp4 folder on your hard drive (bad idea), in that case, you have also to recreate the shortcut or at least change the path to the GP4.exe file.

GP4 is SO slow
Arrggg ! Not this question, please
Well, this can be due to so many factors that I can't count them; here is a short list of reasons and solutions:
- Check you have latest drivers (especially graphical card ones), this is not limited to GP4 so you'd better check this.
- After each driver update (or after graphical card replacement), delete the file F1graphics.cfg. This way GP4 will rebuild its graphical settings according to new graphical card performances at next launch.
- New high quality cars and tyres are quite CPU consuming so be sure to have a strong computer to be able to run GP4 with 22 high quality cars and 88 ( ! ) high quality tyres.
- Be careful with AA (Anti-aliasing) settings, even if GP4 runs perfectly well with latest video cards with AA activated, AA is also ressources consuming and each level of AA will consume a little more resources on your computer.
- Some sound cards (integrated or not) can cause important slow down. To fix this, or check if your sound card is doing this, open the Sounds and Audio Devices configuration panel then Advanced Settings, Performance tab and reduce Hardware Accelerated slider.
- In the game itself, some settings are very CPU consuming as mirrors (though they are very useful), heat haze, dynamic video walls or dynamic car reflections. Be sure that your CPU/graphical cards can handle them.

GP4 slows down or freezes every X minutes
I observed this effect using Norton Anti-virus and whatever the tries to deactivate it, nothing will sort this bug else than completely uninstalling it, what is not advisable : /

I can only see a black screen with Windows Vista / Seven
For some unknown reason, GP4 doesn't run straight away with Windows 7 but a simple trick will fix this. Simply locate your GP4.exe file and do a right click on top of it. Click Properties then choose Compatibility Tab and check "Execute in Compatibility mode for" checkbox and leave Windows XP SP3 selection as is. Hit the apply button and you're done.

GP4 only shows me a black screen and come back to desktop at starting
This trouble has been experimented by several users and is related to printer drivers that has been installed.
So if you have useless printer drivers, remove them and if the matter is still not solved, reinstall your current drivers (there's also maybe an updated version on the net).

GP4 suddenly shutdown after a random number of laps
This problem is often due to driver names changes (made by a mod or by yourself maybe) where one of the driver's name does not include a space character.

In that case, GP4 will run fine as long as it does not display this name but when he needs to display this name finally, he can't and shut down (I know, it's a bit harsh). So the solution is simple : edit driver's name with adequate tool and add a space in them all (you can end the name with a space with no character after like in "Schumi ".

GP4 asks me to calibrate my graphics at every launch
In some case, GP4 seems to not properly detect your graphical card.
To fix this, open the gconfig.txt file in your GP4 folder. You should see something like this :
;gp4 generated file - do not edit

[NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT] good 128

[NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT] untested 128
[] untested 128

The second line is the matter here, so just delete the [NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT] untested 128 line and save the gconfig.txt file changes.



Hardware problems

I have a P4 (Pentium4) and...
OK, you said enough P4 processors use a new technology called Hyper-Threading. Even if it can increase some application execution speed, it can also cause troubles to others and GP4 is in the others. What you could experiment is freezes when pausing game or during replay and freeze to crash when trying to switch from onboard to Track TV cameras.
In such cases, you can try to use GpxPatch and change CPU value onto ӰԠor ӱԠinstead of ԡllԮ
If you donӴ use GpxPatch or if first tip donӴ work, you can also try to use GP4 in Windows 98 compatibilty mode.
If nothing worked so far, you should reboot your computer and disable hyper-threading in the BIOS of your motherboard (check your motherboard booklet or ask on a forum on how doing this).

I have a quite recent graphical card...
It seems GP4 have troubles with recent graphical cards and if you are in such case, all your graphics settings are lost each time you left GP4 (even if you checked the save settings checkbox) and if you go back to graphics menu, resolution will come back to 640*480 automatically.
This has already been experimented with GeForce5900XT and GeForce6600GT and surely with ATI hardware too.
You haven't much choices here, you have to force GP4 to use a fixed graphical configuration.
Go to GP4 folder, open f1graphics.cfg file and replace
0 ; f1graphics.cfg controls all settings (default 0)
by
1 ; f1graphics.cfg controls all settings (default 0)

This way GP4 will use all the settings from this file instead of GP4 ingame settings.

Beware : do not go and change any settings from the game graphics menu else settings from the file could be overridden by your new ingame settings for the time of your current GP4 session.

I have a Thrustmaster Force Feedback wheel...
You can experiment throttle split axis trouble with this wheel.
First, be sure to use patched version of the game if you want to use split axis, because original version of GP4 do not handle split axis with this wheel.
Second, try several drivers if you experiment some troubles. Latest drivers are not always the best for GP4 and I personally kept the 2.6.3 version to play GP4.



Updates and mods problems

Some cars have white parts in game
- This happens every time textures can't be found in the cars.wad. Basically that means the car is not installed as it should. Please check again the gp4form.txt file included in the car package and try to install the car again.

Some cars have different aspect after a given distance
- This is due to the fact that some lods (level of detail : cars are displayed with more or less details, based on distance. There are 4 levels of details in GP4) are still using old car shapes and textures. Like above, this could come from an incomplete installation or more barely from mod's creator who missed (or deigned at that way) to create some lods for his new car. It's up to you to create missing lods from existing ones are to choose to use better lods (mod creators always furnish these lods) only thanks to TeamEditor high res forced shapes options but in that case GP4 will use more CPU ressources.



Tools in general

Tool I'm trying crash at loading (eventually saying me GP4 can't be read)
- Usual Newbie bug Be sure you are using a decrypted GP4.exe file.

Tool I'm trying is saying me that I have a bad/unknown version of GP4
- Another usual bug: Tool you are trying has not been designed for GP4 1.02 (patch 9.6 has been installed). There are now few tools in that case; the most useful are GP4Master and Carset Creator. You can bypass this limitation using a small tool called GP4 Util Patcher that will fix those tools but be carefull, only textures and wad operations will work after this fix, any change to team datas with such modified tools can corrupt your GP4.exe file!



Tool Specific Problems

I did changes in TeamEditor but nothing changes ingame
- Are you sure you selected the right GP4.exe and cars.wad files in Team Editor?
- If you installed GP4Tweaker once, then you maybe activated some features in it that will override TeamEditor changes. The only way to fix this is to launch (reinstall it first if needed) GP4Tweaker and to uncheck checkboxes activating the same features as in TeamEditor.

I can't see any textures in GP4Builder/TeamEditor/Z-Modeler
- All these tools can't read GP4 texture files, .tex files. To be able to preview textures in such editors, you first need to convert all textures needed to .tga file format (see Texture Tools section upper).

I canӴ save my .tex file in GP4Master
Here is a well known bug due to properties of the .tex file you try to update. Open the .tex file properties (right clic on the file then clic on Ԑropertiesԩ and uncheck Read-only attribute. Hit OK Button and Gp4Master will accept your changes now.

Some parts of the Graphical interface in GP4Builder/TeamEditor are unreachable
It's due to the fact that in some countries, Windows is preset to run with a 120dpi resolution whereas this tools has been designed for 96dpi only.
To fix this, go to Configuration panel\Display\Parameters Tab\Advanced button\General Tab
You should see a combobox with your actual dpi setting. just pick the 96dpi instead of 120 and you're done.