ATS and ETS2 won't start/crashes. Help!

[Banterlona]

Good morning, afternoon, evening to anyone reading this.

I am new to these forums, so apologies if I my post seems off or nor organized or missing info relating to my problem. I created an account to see if anyone can help me with a new problem I am experiencing on both ATS and ETS2.

ATS and ETS2 are some of the games I spend the most time playing and last time I picked any of them was about 2 weeks ago from today. About 1 week ago was the last time I tried to pick up ATS and came across something different. My game was not starting. All that appears is a small window on the top left corner of my screen and moments later is closes, as seen here. [ external image ] (did I do the img thing right?) Then I tried to start ETS2 and got the same thing. It's frustrating because I don't remember doing anything to my gaming laptop (I know, gaming laptop) or downloading something that could crash ATS and ETS2. Except, I just purchased and downloaded 'Wreckfest' on what I believe to have been between the last time I picked up ATS/ETS2 to the last time I tried to play. I've tested on playing other games and they run fine, so I am assuming it is just those 2 games having this issue.

I am not very tech savvy so I got a handful of help on the TruckersMP discord server (which I need to mention I don't use any TMP mods, I just needed to find a big server to find help). From there, here is a list of what we tried to do to try to resolve my problem:
-Restarting my laptop
-Uninstalling the game and re-installing it (more than twice on both)
-Moving the games from my external drive to the internal drive via Steam
-Verifying files (both when the 2 games were in my external drive and then internal drive)
-Updated any drivers
-Cleared the mods folder
-Cleared workshop mods
-Trying to start in Safe Mode
-Shutting off my Anti-Virus
-Looked if there was any new Windows update and installed if any
-Uninstalled Wreckfest, since that was the only thing I can remember downloading after ATS/ETS2 was still working
-Tried to run the games in Compatibility Mode
-Tried to run as Administrator
-Uninstalled Steam and then Re-Installed
-Installed (again) ATS and ETS2
-Uninstalled any previous Windows update that could've been downloaded after the games still worked
-Created a Restore Point to then run a System Restore

And maybe other stuff. I forget how many things we tried. Y'all will just have to ask me if I tried something or not. Half of these I wouldn't have figured out without the help from the discord people.

The last thing they suggested me to do is factory resetting my entire laptop. I really don't want to do that but it's looking like it's my only hope but I then I remembered about this place and I'm here now hoping someone can narrow down the problem even more or finding out if it's something completely different.

Just like in the discord server, I'll paste my specs, game logs, and crash logs as it could help.

Specs:
Processor: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13420H, 2100 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 11
Storage: 2TB WB_Black External Game Drive

ATS

game.log.txt

ATS Game Log

(22.2 KiB) Downloaded 6 times

game.crash.txt

ATS Game Crash

(28.95 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

ETS2

game.log.txt

ETS2 Game Log

(27.99 KiB) Downloaded 11 times

game.crash.txt

ETS2 Game Crash

(29.19 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

[Madkine]

This crash type may be related to your GPU drivers.

Unfortunately I have not yet seen a consistent fix for this issue.

Try re-installing your GPU drivers or reverting to an earlier version.
If you do fix the issue, please post here to let us know so we can share the fix with other users.

[MirM]

@Banterlona

1. Maybe try editing the "config.cfg" file with notepad and changing the value

r_fullscreen "1"
to
r_fullscreen "0"

Please write whether the game started, and if so, please insert a new, current game.log.

This may be helpful in solving the reported problems.

Please also provide information about the native screen resolution of the laptop on which you are running the games.

2. You wrote that you are using Windows 11, but "game.log" and "game.crash" show something different:

0:00:00.000 : [sys] running on x86_64 / Windows 8 x64 (version 6.2.9200)

OS: x86_64 / Windows 8 x64 (version 6.2.9200)

I assume that you started the games in Windows 8 compatibility mode, and that is why there are problems.

==========
Sorry, I'm using a translator.

[Banterlona]

Sorry for the late reply.
@Madkine
I re-installed the current drivers and no luck there. I then tried to install an older driver from March (the games still functioned properly on March). Device Manager didn't allowed me to revert my drivers so I had to go to the official Nvidia website and download the '572.83 - WHQL' update from March 18, 2025. I did a "clean install," which uninstalled any previous drivers and installed the "new" driver. After restarting my laptop and tried again to run these games, still no luck. I also attempted the Ctrl+Shift+Windows+B trick after I found out that was a thing and no luck there either.

@MirM
I tried your suggestion and changes the values from "1" to "0" but after booting up the game, still no luck. I also noticed that the value goes back to "1." I thought I made a mistake like not saving my changes but no, after attempting to run these games, the value goes back from "0" to "1." Is that normal?

The resolution I use when running my games are usually 1920x1080.

And about the Windows 8 Compatibility Mode, yheaaaa I forgot to revert them back to Windows 11 after attempting to run it through compatibility mode. My bad, I just forgot, here are the new logs as you requested.

ATS:

game.crash.txt

Game Crash

(28.8 KiB) Downloaded 6 times

game.log.txt

Game Log

(22.2 KiB) Downloaded 9 times

ETS2:

game.crash.txt

Game Crash

(29.04 KiB) Downloaded 4 times

game.log.txt

Game Log

(28 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

I appreciate the help lads!

[Madkine]

I've since heard a possible solution for this.

For at least one user the issue is their GPU not liking a combination of settings.

For them scaling at 300% with SMAA+TAA selected caused these crashes.
Changing the settings to 400% and TAA only resolved the issue.

Try different values for these settings and see if it resolves the issue for you and please report back your findings so that we can assist other people.

[Banterlona]

@Madkine I'm assuming I make those changes through the "config.cfg" file? But I'm not too sure what values to change. Or can I access these setting somewhere else?

[Madkine]

These can be changed through the in game menus as well as via the config file.

[Banterlona]

@Madkine So I tried changing these settings through the Nvidia App (since I can't even access the game menus nor can find it through the config.cfg file). It allowed me to change the ATS settings to TAA only and scaled it to 400%, but unfortunately no luck there, still not starting. The Nvidia App won't let me change the settings for ETS2 which for that it's set to SMAA+TAA and at 300%.

[Tom]

you can try to reset all gfx settings. by renaming/deleting config.cfg file in game folder in documents.
also can you try to start game in OpenGL.
game should ask you as you click on "play" in steam. DirectX is defualt option.
if not. open properties and into launch options type: -rdevice gl

[Banterlona]

@Tom @Madkine WHAT!? It worked!! All I did was start the games using OpenGL! It's kinda funny. I don't konw how I missed that.
But I don't get it. It works in OpenGL but not the usual DirectX which was what I always used. Y'all think something is wrong with my DirectX?
So far, the game is running like normal. Which I'm super happy about. All I can think of is maybe a bad DirectX update or something like that?

Anyways, thank you all so much! I will continue to play ATS/ETS2 to see if everything is running smoothly.