5 Tips to Troubleshoot Issues With PC Games

PC games are one of the most favored options to release your work stress

PC games are one of the most favored options to release your work stress, spend some quality time with family, and to offer a competitive spirit to our players. A PC game can easily offer you an amazing platform to share your strategic and planning skills, action moves, and subtle intelligence that can help you win the battle. Installing a game, matching it with system configuration, and experiencing a real-time play will give a different and exciting experience for all your young ones. The entire industry has experienced many rises and falls due to introduction of latest technology, however, several users stick back to this option over consoles and play stations.

 Some users think that a bulky PC is all about backwards compatibility, but the configuration and system components can lead to severe issues while connecting it to a modern generation game. PC unresponsiveness, screen lags, PC hangs, display and sound options, error during install, and problems with In-game help, hints, and walkthroughs are some of the common and frequent issues faced by a PC gamer. It’s quite possible that each game has a different codecs, display settings, and system configuration requirements, hence, games designed for DOS may not work properly on modern Windows versions. In order to resolve all these above mentioned issues, a user may need to apply some tips, tricks, and tweaks to keep their favorite games running on their desired device.

Here are the 5 best tips to troubleshoot common issues that a user faces while playing games on his PC.

1. Use DOSBox for DOS Games

Most of the Windows PC games are developed on DOS platform, hence, won’t be able to run on modern versions of Windows. Additionally, running them in the Command Prompt will also not bring desired results as a complete DOS environment can’t be created on Windows. DOS empowered games need a complete environment that can easily offer a low-level access to Sound Blaster and other settings, on which DOS game depends upon. Users having old DOS games and want to run it on modern versions of Windows can install DOSBox to run their favorite games not only on Windows but on Mac and Linux as well.

Installing a DOSBox can help you run classic DOS games on any OS and several versions of DOSBox have also been created for Android and iOS. To start the process, just fire up DOSBox and load the DOS game’s directory on it. Use DOSBox to run your favorite game and if not succeeded, simply perform a Google search for the game’s name as well as DOSBox. If you’re lucky enough, then you can easilyfind some quick tips from other users to set this up.

Owing to its high popularity and feature-rich properties, many of the old DOS games sold on sites like Steam and GOG that come preconfigured to work with DOSBox. As these games are pre-configured with DOSBox settings, users can easily play them on their desired operating systems without putting any efforts in configuration. Users having a huge library of old PC games should not buy them again rather they are recommended to just tweak their DOSBox.

2. Adjust Windows compatibility settings

Sometimes, you might feel that the game you’re currently running on your Windows device is either crashing or isn’t running properly. Have you ever thought of the reason behind this? Virus infections, poor PC performance, bad graphic card, or insufficient RAM can be some of the reasons, but checking Windows compatibility can be very helpful to resolve this issue. Window’s compatibility mode lets a user to trick games to think that they’re running on previous versions of Windows, thus, ensures optimal performance of a game.

To access Windows Compatibility settings, right-click on the game’s shortcut, select ‘Properties,’ and then proceed towards the ‘Compatibility’ tab. On the ‘Compatibility’ tab, enable the ‘compatibility mode’ option to set your game to a previous working version of Windows.

3. Always install the latest official patches

Security issues are one of the major problems that a user faces when a 10 year-old game is pulled out of the closet and played on a PC. Ensure that you’ve installed all the necessary updates, bug fixes, and patches before you play your favorite game on the PC. You can easily download the latest official patches of your favorite game from the developer’s website and install the same immediately in order to avoid any security breaches.

Installing these patches will hopefully fix all the issues that you might face with modern versions of Windows and will also fix the bugs that might create a problem while running the game. You can look for the automatic update feature in the modern games that are paired up with built-in updaters, which ensure that a user never misses any important update.

4. Run as Administrator

Run as Administrator setting plays a vital role for some older games that won’t work properly if commanded to run as a standard Windows user account. The reason behind it is that a standard user account comes with limited privileges that aren’t enough to support the process of the game.

You can easily command an older game to ‘Run as Administrator’ by simply right-clicking on the game shortcut, or .exe file and selecting the ‘Run as Administrator’ option from the drop-down menu. Users are recommended not to attempt this option, unless you really don’t need it to run games normally instead of using this mode.

If you feel that the game always requires to be operated on ‘Run as Administrator’ mode, then you can save a setting in ‘Compatibility’ tab to bring this setting in action, by default. To do the same, right-click on the game’s shortcut, select the ‘Properties’ option, and then click the ‘Compatibility’ tab in the opened window. Check mark the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ checkbox and save the settings to always run the game in ‘Run as administrator’ mode.

5. Make edits in Configuration Files

Configuration files create a well-established platform for making edits in pre-defined game settings and modifying it later in order to bring up a seamless gaming experience. Your old games might not fit compatible with latest PCs that are equipped with modern screen resolutions or Full HD display. To fix such glitches and flaws, a user can easily access some special options that are only found in their configuration files. Making edits in the video options menu, making adjustments in the sound quality and options, rearranging frame per second (fps) settings, lowering down resolution, and having super graphics are some common edits areas.

If you’re unable to locate a pre-defined setting that can easily work with the configuration of your game, then you can also enter values in the configuration files manually. Alternatively, you can also look up for the edits on Google or use the PC Gaming Wiki for seeking information specific to individual games and their configuration files.

The above mentioned tips will help you to troubleshoot some of the common issues that you might face while playing PC games. Apart from these, you can also ensure that your computer’s RAM, video RAM, device’s processor, and hard disk drive meet the developer’s recommendations in order to ensure smooth running of games on your PC. A user should also verify that the device has all the latest video drivers installed for smooth and optimal performance of the video card. It is really important to install the latest version of DirectX on PC, otherwise either the game will not respond or it will hang or lag. Several background running processes may interrupt the exact functioning of a game, hence, it is essential to close all background programs and TSRs, before you install a game. All the modern games will work fine on the PCs, still you may need these tips for the ones that have been lying in your closets since long.

Brooke M. Perry is an ardent technician associated with Qresolve online computer support with wide experience of fixing issues with PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphone. With a strong track record of devising effective ways of online tech support and system security, she has so far helped thousands of users across the globe.

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