Friendship Stuck/Crashing on Main Menu

[tranquil sail]

Friendship: Having issues with main menu. Currently looping on:
"Authenticating User"
"Retrieving Remote Settings"
Back to "Press Any Button" until I press another button, then goes back to "Authenticating User", then "Retrieving Remote Settings", and so on...

If I let it keep looping, my PC crashes and restarts.

So far I've:

• Disabled cloud sync
• Uninstalled game, then reinstalled, made sure cloud sync was still disabled
• Tried running as administrator from the game's folder, same behavior
• Updated AMD chipset and GPU drivers through Adrenalin
• Made sure Windows 11 was fully updated

My friend and I have played through every other game in the series with 0 issues. We just beat Forever last night. My friend was able to start a game and invited me. He has an NVIDIA card and Windows 11. Thinking this might be related to AMD but with my drivers updated, not sure what else there is to do. He is in Ontario, Canada and I am in US East.

[tranquil sail]

Alright, I think I fixed it. Had to use the script from this link to delete my Steam cloud save that appeared from the first time I started the game. That fixed the menu looping.

https://totalmayhemgames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/23285865762717-Stuck-on-starting-screen-before-the-main-menu

Game was still crashing though. Just like it used to with Hogwards Legacy when I got this GPU and switched from NVIDIA to AMD. So I had to AGAIN go nuke my AMD GPU drivers with Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstall with AMD Software Adrenalin Edition just like I did to fix Hogwarts Legacy two different times when AMD drivers update and start causing my PC to reboot randomly on certain games.

I'll try to play with my friend tomorrow but I probably fixed what turned out to be a two-part problem. Thanks for that script and the good troubleshooting guide that references it!

[tranquil sail]

Game seems to crash if I tab out of it, computer reboots, but think that's an AMD driver issue that has haunted me in the past with Hogwarts Legacy

[deep torrent]

Hey there! Thanks for the extensive info. It does sound like some hardware issue or perhaps you have any drivers or software on your PC that interfere with games like these and cause crashes. Wouldn’t know for certain though. Is your GPU a dedicated GPU or an integrated one?

[tranquil sail]

AMD 7900XTX Hellhound, pretty much the best AMD GPU I could buy. Pretty sure the issue is related to drivers, maybe the fact that I'm using a TV to play instead of a monitor too... Going to see if it behaves differently in windowed vs full screen mode if the game lets me change that.

[tranquil sail]

The game crashes immediately if I turn full screen mode off. Luckily the setting doesn't auto save. I was able to change resolution and turn v-sync on though.

This is definitely something not playing nice with graphics drivers.

[main moon]

I had this issue as well and tried EVERYTHING to fix it.

Image attached:

First disabled cloud saves like mentioned on Steam support:
"REMOTE SETTING FAILED
If you get this message when trying to start the game, try turning off your Steam Cloud Sync."

It changed how the error presented in that it didn't get stuck in a loop like in the image above, but it would immedately go back to "press any button" instead of progressing to the title screen.

I also tried to find a way to delete local saves in effort to overwrite the cloud save with a new save, but couldnt find them anywhere. I uninstalled and reinstalled with cloud saves off, but still no success.

I tried launching as an administrator, I tried verifying the save files, finally in desperation I tried uninstalling and removing from my account, thinking maybe it would remove my cloud save which it seems to be connected to. Nope. Instead it now is asking me to purchase the game again. I got it for free as a promotion and my friends and I are just now starting to play it. I have the receipt information still, I'd love to get my copy back so I can try the suggestion above. I wish I had come here before removing it from my account 🙁 If you need any proof for me to share and get my copy back, I'm happy to provide it.

[deep torrent]

Hey Aaron! Sorry to hear you're having trouble getting into the game.
Did you check if your PC meets the min. requirements and that you are not using an integrated graphics card?
It could also be that your Firewall/Anti-virus is blocking game files. You could whitelist our game and verify your integrity files and relaunch. But if the game is completely removed from your account, you've basically deleted it. Steam should also give you a warning when doing this. We cannot help with this, you could try to contact Steam support and show your receipt and see if they could help you regarding that. I can only try to help you with the error message you're getting