Corrupted savegame in GTA IV

How a save gets corrupted

It is related to modding or using a trainer. 

I got a corrupted save after 25 missions (after Roman’s Sorrow) when I was making a Russian translation of mission names frequently modifying .gxt file and using SNT’s Mission Help a lot. 

How to know if your savegame is corrupt

Symptoms of a corrupted savegame are:

• Frequent crashes with Exception code 0xc0000005 and the same Fault offset in Application Log especially during cutscenes or start of new game from menu Game
• Corruption artifacts - missing pavement or car park ground textures in BOABO near Brucie's house

After corrupted save is loaded the corruption stays in the running game ("corrupted session"), significantly increases the probability of crash and will corrupt all savegames you make.

How to cure corruption

The only reliable way to cure it is to autoload known-good clean save at the launch of the game or delete all saves and start a new game. It is possible to load clean save or start a new game during a corrupted session, save and exit the game – on next launch the game should be clean. It's important to regularly manually save into separate slots during your playthrougth so that you could have a relatively recent good save.

If any save is loaded into corrupted session there’s no way to know that the save you loaded is good and clean because corruption artifacts will stay in current session even after clean save is loaded!

To find a good save 

• Leave only one save file (the one you are checking) in game save folder to make sure that it is the one autoloaded on launch of the game;
• Exit and relaunch the game;
• After game world is loaded drive or teleport to BOABO and check. If there are no artifacts there then the save is clean and you may use it to continue playing.