If you are facing the error “Grand Theft Auto V has stopped working” while launching the game, read this article carefully. Here we will tell you several ways to fix this problem.

The first step in fixing the problem is to run the game as an administrator. Go to the folder with the game, right-click on GTA5.exe or Launcher, select “Properties”, then the ‘Compatibility’ tab and check the box “Run this program as administrator”.

Click “OK” and try to launch the game. Sometimes this is enough to make GTA work stably. But if the problem remains, you need to go to the next step - replacing the configuration file of the game.

Replacing the file gameconfig.xml through OpenIV

The error is often associated with incompatibility of the original configuration file with the installed mods. The solution is to replace the gameconfig.xml file with a modified one. Download a suitable config pre-determining the version of your game. To do this, click on GTA5.exe, select the tab “Information” and remember the version number.

You will need the program OpenIV - a tool that can be used to make changes to game files.

Run OpenIV, enable edit mode and follow the path: update > update.rpf > common > data.

The program will prompt you to copy the file to the mods folder, confirm the action. Find the original gameconfig.xml, make a backup copy of it, and then replace it with the downloaded modified file corresponding to your version.

After that, disable edit mode and restart the game with administrator rights. If everything is done correctly, the error will disappear.

Additional ways to fix the failure GTA5.exe

If replacing the file did not help, you can use two more ways. 

The first - with the help of Steam error logs. Open the Steamapps folder, find the error.log file and check it for the presence of the line The application caused access violation in xxxx.dll.

The specified .dll file is the source of the failure. Copy its name and scan the system through the DLL Fixer program, then download and install the fixed file through the “Install DLL” section. After restarting your PC, try to run the game again.

The second method is to change the Windows boot configuration. Open a command prompt, enter the msconfig command. Go to the “Boot” tab, click “Advanced Options”, activate the “Number of processors” option and select at least two (depending on your CPU). Save the settings, reboot and check if the error is resolved.

If none of the described methods yielded results, there is an option to roll back to the original state of the game. To do this, simply return the original gameconfig.xml file that you saved at the initial stage. In addition, check for the latest Windows updates and video card drivers - errors are often associated with outdated software.

Important: do not install questionable mods or use outdated versions of configs. Make sure that the files correspond to the version of your game, because very often this is the cause of failures.