How to fix GTA IV not starting with dsound

bucky16 · September 30, 2013

Hello,

I was having this problem for a long time and today I made a major breakthrough and fixed the problem. Here is the solution and this will work on windows vista & 7 (I do not know about 8).

If you are getting a securom error, check and see if you have IE 9 installed. If you do follow these steps:

Make sure your logged on as an administrator
in the search bar in the start menu, type in cmd and click on the result

Copy the following command:

FORFILES /P %WINDIR%servicingPackages /M Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer-*9.*.mum /c "cmd /c echo Uninstalling package @fname && start /w pkgmgr /up:@fname /norestart"

If a user access control window pops up asking yes or no, click yes and do this everytime (this might not occur depending on your UAC settings)
After that is finished, restart your computer.
After restarting, check and see if IE 9 has been either removed or downgraded to 8
Launch GTA IV, and ENJOY!

Hope these steps help everyone fix their issues. If this helped, please click the little green arrow at the bottom. Thanks.

P.S. Could this please be pinned at the top of the support forum?

Edit: SON OF A (explicitive)! It decided to mess up again! Now I have absolutely no idea what to do now.

Edited October 1, 2013 by bucky16

Off. John · September 30, 2013

I tried this, and it did not work. I've tried a couple of things, and didn't worked. I am running Windows 7 and I figured out that my game can run fine WITHOUT dsound.dll but as soon as I put that file in the root of GTAIV it messes up and gives me a SecuRom error! I've tried running as administrator. I've down-graded to 1.0.0.4, this is my second install. Please help!

ineseri · October 1, 2013

Removing IE is probably just a random fix, and it's not removing IE that fixes. Leave it be, sadly some programs need IE to work properly. I would recommend launching the game as administrator, and removing any unnecessary mods.