Sea of Thieves cannot start on Steam, crashes with software overlay or nvwgf2umx.dll error

  • System: Windows 11 Home, GPU: GeForce GTX 970M, 16 GB RAM (MSI GT70), 1920x1080

    Because my old GPU did not work (GTX 675MX), when I bought Sea on Steam I could still play the game with whatever it loaded, Intel HD graphics and some low settings but it never complained about overlay software or other. When upgrading the BIOS and EC of the laptop to make 970M work, I am testing games with 970M and all games run fine (tested StarCraft II, MK11, Hellblade, Plague Tale, Myst) run on high settings or more and not crash. I have installed GeForce Exp it has found latest driver, whatever Windows updates are latest. Yet the game cannot run at all with this message in the link: https://i.imgur.com/a5l21mU.jpg . I do not have GeForce Experience active or other app like that, I tried disabling anti virus for 10 mins, again none of that were a problem the game to run before upgrade. And I reinstalled the game just now with same error.

    I cannot even submit a support ticket on the site, just gives some "Error" and that is it?

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  • All I can suggest is to disable the steam overlay and reinstall the geforce drivers. Since having all the latest win updates and geforce drivers all other games work ok?

  • Isn't that an Nvidia dll file error?

    It looks like from the message, it seems to not like some overlay you're trying to put on top of the game.

    Like the person above you, I recommend you disable all overlays you're trying to place on the game or go find yourself that nvidia driver nuker to completely and I mean COMPLETELY remove and reinstall your geforce driver.

  • All other games run OK and with the better performance I expected, better than my old 675MX,. There are some visual glitches on 2 of the games (Hellblade and Myst) that are showing some colorful rainbow reflections especially with Ray Tracing but I found something else that could relate. If I set e.g. in Hellbladeto use DX11 instead of DX12 just trying to fix black areas and colorful reflections, the game crashes, it wants DX12 but I could disable Ray Tracing. And since the only way to enter game was to do it outside from GameUserSettings.ini to disable, that is how I saw Sea of Thieves aka Athena has the same file.

    I uninstalled the nvidia driver and yes I could run Sea of Thieves (and probably OBS) as if I never had a gpu like before, on Intel HD graphics. Eventually disabling nvidia just for this game is a rough workaround but the idea is to make it work like I need to have the nvidia obviously. Everything else runs fine.

    So Im playing with GameUserSettings.ini and trying to see what values are for full screen, window and maybe it could be because it uses DX11 set from before when using integrated.

  • Hey I want to share this because it may not be so obvious. I always knew that updated drivers are good but I had no idea it was going to fix EVERYTHING.

    If you play other games may have heard that diablo 4 beta kind of bricked a bunch of GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or 3070 Ti and alike. The game required a new driver to even run and it is what made me go this way. So as I posted I replaced the GPU with GTX 970M but the latest driver for me was GRD 353.54 from 2018. I didn't care because I saw games ran, although some had terrible visual glitches like Hellblade and Myst.

    Sea of Thieves did not run at all, it was the only game that I couldn't event start (unless I uninstalled the nvidia and played on integrated Intel ofc with low settings) otherwise nvwgf2umx.dll error. Same error for OBS app.

    For some reason GeForce Exp never notified of newer driver and gave 353 as latest. I tried manually downloading the latest like GRD 531.4 but it would show

    Nvidia Driver Not Compatible With This Version Of Windows
    The graphics driver couldn’t find compatible graphics hardware

    But thanks to MSI forum they led me to use a tool called NVCleanstall

    It modifies the INF file you choose (in my case MSI was nvmiig.inf (settings that contain what drivers to use) adding the ID of your GPU to it and basically modifying the setup to run, install and kick the errors (I read I had to Disable Secure Boot from BIOS but this may not be needed only if error occurred, did it anyway)

    Result:

    I installed GRD 531.41 and it is not the version itself that did it but because it is a recent compared to 2018. And now GeForce Experience, Device Manager and Nvidia Control panel show the driver I wanted as latest

    • No more visual glitches in Hellblade and Myst now with their true colors
    • OBS studio does not crash but runs
    • Sea of Thieves can now launch with Nvidia driver
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