Immerse yourself into the bottom to top by making your name in the streets of cold and unforgiving city. But not before you resolve tons of game breaking errors, random freezes and crashes.
Especially the price of eye candy of PhysX, which will make the game performance frustrating for ATI users and people with low ended or average PC’s.
You can see for different workarounds in the guide below that may solve your issue.
Mafia 2 Troubleshooting Tips
1# 3D Vision not working in Mafia 2
If you are facing issues like un-readable text and black textures when you try to play Mafia 2 using 3D vision. You need to install nVidia 3D vision drivers on top of your video card drivers. You can download and install them from here.
2# Black Lines, Graphical Error
If you are seeing black lines in certain parts of the game during different missions, make sure your video card is not overheated.Verify and check the temperature of your video card and system using any system monitor tool.
3# ATI Graphics Issues
If you are facing certain graphic glitches, you can resolve this by running the game windowed. You can change it in the game options menu of the game.
4# Mafia 2 PhysX Performance Tweaks
You can remove the apex clothing simulation effects from the game to increase the frame rates and overall game performance. Follow the guide, I posted earlier for Mafia 2 PhysX Fix.
5# Start Up Black Screen and Mode not supported Error
When the game loads, the monitor stays black with the floating box saying “mode not supported”. You can hear the game sound and game content loading, but can’t get to display the video. It happens because of the video settings, and you need to follow the steps below to get it to work.
Start up the Mafia 2 and then DON’T TOUCH the mouse again until the monitor problem is fixed and follow these steps.
- Listen for the nVidia logo to start and press Esc.
- Another video will play, press Esc again.
- Wait a second and press Esc once more.
- You are now at the Main Menu. Press Down arrow 1 time and press Enter. (you should hear click sounds as you navigate the menus).
- You are in Options Menu. Press Down arrow 2 times and Enter.
- You are in Video Options. Press Down arrow 1 time, then hold down the Left arrow until the click sounds stop.
- You are going to change the Resolution to 640×480. Press Esc, wait for a second and press Enter, wait 5 more seconds and press Enter again.
- If you did everything right then you should now see the Video Options menu on screen. Use the arrow keys or mouse to set the resolution up to 1024×768 (or whatever your monitor can handle), press Esc, press Enter to accept, wait for screen change and press Enter to accept again.
- Now fully exit the game, restart the game and hope that it saved your changes.
Courtesy adair0061@ Steam Forums.
6# Mafia 2 Doesn’t Start
Update your video card drivers, and directX. Also download the specified version of PhysX and run the game in compatibility mode as admin. Make sure the game is not broken by running an integrity check via Steam.
7# Quitting Game, Changes Monitor Settings
CTRL+ALT+DEL to reset everything.
8# Steam Error “The Game is Unavailable”
Log out of steam, and restart it.
9# Mafia 2 Doesn’t Start after loading Splash Image, Resolution Problem
When you click Mafia 2 executable, game starts with splash image which disappears after a while and then nothing happens.
Go to
C:\Users\yourAccountUserName\AppData\Local\2K Games\Mafia II\Saves
and open file “videoconfig” with notepad and change all 1’s to zeroes (0’s).
Within that file you will find something like:
0 0 1680 1050 1 0 0 1
Change it to:
0 0 640 480 0 0 0 0
This will solve this issue and game will start normally and looks better.If the file/folder doesn’t exist, create it.
9.1 # Mafia 2 Blackscreen Fix
When you start the game, it gives you a constant black screen, one reason for that can your monitor being out of range. Simple solution is:
Go to
C:\Users\yourAccountUserName\AppData\Local\2K Games\Mafia II\Saves
and open file “videoconfig” with notepad and change video resolution to your native desktop resolution. Thanks @Xander for tip.
10# Mafia 2 Brightness Bug Fix
Right click on Mafia 2.exe and go to its properties. Click on the compatibility tab and check “disable desktop composition”, save the changes.
11# Mafia 2 Custom Keys Configuration
Mafia 2 Custom Keys Tutorial.
12# Mafia 2 Graphics Errors
Black lines across the map, black NPC’s, and weird shadows ?. You may need to do the following, for any chance to resolve these issues.
- Update your drivers.
- Update Nvidia Physix.
- Verify integrity of the demo’s cache.
- Disable any additional settings in ATI’s Catalyst Control Center or Nvidia equivalent.
- Turn down settings to minimum and work your way up.
- Check that your all your computers fans are working and that it isn’t overheating.
13#Mafia 2 Steam Installation Error
When you start the installation, it gets stuck at “Installing: Launcher.exe (step 1 of 4)”. Try launching these two installers manually,
Steam\SteamApps\common\mafia ii\3rd folder
(PhysX_10.05.12_9.10.0512_SystemSoftware.msi and DXSETUP.exe in DirectX folder).
14# ATI PhysX Fix
ATI users may face poor framerates and performance issues if they opt to play the game while PhysX is enabled.
The reason behind it if you are on ATI card, all the PhysX processing is done by your CPU rather then your GPU. So the simple solution to this will be disabling the PhsyX or tweak.
15# No Voices in Cut Scenes ?
Update your sound card drivers.
16# Mafia 2 Game Freezes
If you are on an old graphic card, disable the PhysX. No need to even tweak it for good performance, just disable it and run the game on low/medium settings.
Note. Guys go through the comments and you may well resolve your issue, thanks.
Any other issue you are facing ? comment away.
