Alien Swarm Errors,Crashes,Freezes,Bugs and Fixes

Alien Swarm is a free shooter game developed by PC Moders ‘Black Cat Games’, that was originally a mode to Unreal Tournament 2004. The game was supported by Valve and released as free on Steam this monday, something for the PC community eh ?. Alien Swarm features 4 player co op multiplayer, and supports dedicated server, the game SDK was released with the game so you can expect a lot of mods in the coming days.
Meanwhile players who have downloaded the game are facing many errors, freezes, and bugs as the rush to download the game caused a lot of people to miss some game files.

There is no active development on the game being free for the time being. Anyway, you can follow the fix guide below for all the workarounds and possible solutions to these problems.

Alien Swarm Errors, Crashes, Freezes and Fixes Guide

1# Alien Swarm Out of Range Error
Right click on ‘Alien Swarm’ in Steam -> Properties -> Set launch options.
Add “-w 1024 -h 768 -refresh 60″. Run the game, and change video settings in game options to this resolution and refresh rate. It happens because your monitor doesn’t support default resolution.Remove this command line after you have changed the video settings.

2# ‘Failed to create D3D device’
This error can be resolved by forcing the native resolution in steam command line.

3# Alien Swarm “Engine Error Model models/gib/hgibs.mdl not found and models/error.dll couldn’t be loaded”

4# Alien Swarm Missing Textures
Verify integrity of game cache. Right click on the game and go to properties and local files, it will be there.

5# Error Can’t Find Background Image
When you launch an error, it gives this error and game needs to be closed. Right click on the game in Steam Library, go to properties, local files and verify cache files.

6# Unable to Load .dll file
Verifty the integrity of the files.

7# Alien Swarm Ports Forwarding
You need to port forward these ports, 27015, 27005 and everything will work fine, all connection issues resolved.

8# Executed AlienSwarm.exe, and nothing happened ?
Try running the game as admin, or in Windows XP SP2 compatibility.

9# nVidia Users Graphics Issues
Update your graphics to 185 version, or downgrade to 185 and the game will work fine again.

10# Alien Swarm Freezes With a Grey Screen
It has happened randomly with few people on ATI cards, it seems as if it is specific to ATI cards, but sadly there is no fix as of now.

11# Alien Swarm Launcher Error
When you launch the game it gives error “Failed to Load the launcher DLL:(null)”
1. Restart Steam.
2. Restart Computer.
3. Go the folder and launch the application directly.
4. Validate integrity of game cache.
If that Doesn’t work, try this.
Go the folder in your steam index/common/alien swarm
delete the Type. file “srcds_run” and then revalidate the integrity of game cache.

12# Alien Swarm Freezing  Bug on Training Mode
When you start the training mode, the game freezes to cause the black screen of death. It doesn’t crashes but eats all the resources until you kill the process. The possible solution to this issue is update your graphic card drivers. Or try ALT + Enter to switch to window mode and it will fix the problem.

13# Engine Error ‘MXR_LoadAllSoundMixers: unable to open ‘scripts/soundmixers.txt’
Update your sound card drivers and see if it helps. Also verify the integrity of the game files as due to high demand of this game certain people have broken game files, which may be the reason to this error.

14# Alien Swarm Stuttering Issues
If your game seizes after few seconds of the gameplay, these freezes make the game highly unplayable. Try disabling multicore rendering and see if it helps.

15# Alien Swarm DirectX problem
You have the latest directX 9.0c but still are unable to play the game ? then do this.
1. Open steam, log in (Can’t play with logged out.)
2. Go to C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\Common\alienswarm‘
3. Doubleclick on alienswarm.exe, or make a shortcut of that then open.
4. Now you can play.

16# Establishing Connection to Games, Quits After 10 tries
Servers are really busy, so you have to bear with this.

17# Alien Swarm Missing Hud
Those of you playing the game on higher resolutions ‘wide screen’ might face this bug, which may seem as if your curser has gone and life bars on all of your team mates gone missing. Try opening swarm/scripts/HudLayout.res and increasing the “wide” value for the “ASWHudCrosshair“.

18# Alien Swarm Black Screen Error
When you launch the game you come across black screen of death, you can hear the sound but can only see black screen. You know what you need to do right ? force the native resolution and refresh rate in the steam command line.

19# Alien Swarm Microphone Bug ?
Lot of people reported this issue while playing the game, they can hear the sound of others but others can’t hear their voice. should be an audio driver issue. Look in the recording options for something like “Stereo Mix” and turn it off.”

20#Alien Swarm Connection Problems
If you are having problems connecting to games via match making system. You can try this workaround to connect.
1. Open the console and type bind “F11″ “openserverbrowser”.
2. Close console and press F11
3. Use the server browser as you would in any other game, sort by ping/players.

These connection issues arise as you are connecting to the high ping servers.

21# Alien Swarm Blue Screen Freezes
Its for nVidia card users, try downgrading 185  driver version or 197.45 driver version.

22# Alien Swarm Custom Battle Music Fix
Try removing any embedded album art from the MP3. A good program to do this is mp3tag. Make sure to remove the mp3 in game, exit/restart the game, then read the “fixed” mp3. The game randomly selects one of the mp3′s, if it selects the one without album art, it will play fine and if it selects one with album art, it wouldn’t play anything not even the default battle music.

23# Alien Swarm Banned From Server ?
If by any chance you get banned while playing Alien Swarm online, you can try that.
Go to ‘banlist.text‘ C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\alien swarm\swarm

Delete the contents of the file when you find it. It should have you, and your IP on it.

Got anything else that can help ? tell.