SteamVR crashes on launch. SteamVR Has encountered a critical error.

[NovaCaster]

Alright, so I've been trying to sort this problem out for well over 3 months now. Whenever I launch SteamVR, it just flat crashes.  The program opens just fine, but regardless of weather or not you click anything or not, after about 30 seconds to 1 minute, it hard locks up and crashes, giving a "SteamVR has encountered a critical error" message. In the first 30 seconds you can look around and move freely in the VR home, but if you try to open any menu or do anything else, it freezes. It doesn't crash my computer when this happens, Just SteamVR itself. every 5 times or so I try it also crashes Steam with it. 

 

Outside of SteamVR, my VR works perfectly.  I can play Microsoft Flight Simulator or any other Windows Mixed Reality title just fine, I can play Beat Saber fine if I'm not running it through Steam.  This problem also persists across both of my headsets and will also crash even if my headset isn't connected to my tower at the time. 

 

Things I've tried:

- Verifying SteamVR file integrity.

- Reinstalling SteamVR

- Updating Microsoft VisualC++ Redist.

- Updating Nvidia Drivers

- Updating USB Drivers

- Disabling antivirus or other software that would likely interfere with it.

- Running Steam as Administrator

- Running SteamVR with the -safe tag

- Several other things I can't even remember <.<;

 

System Specs

- Windows 10

- Ryzen 5800x

- Asus B450 F Gaming

- Gigabyte Aorus Master  RTX 3070

- 64GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 running at 3200

- 2TB NVME drive

- 1200W Thermaltake PSU

- Oculus Quest 2

- Oculus Rift S

 

Any idea's? This has been a pretty frustrating thing to deal with since absolutely nothing I try works at all. Any help would be much appreciated.  Any questions you have I'll answer as best I can. Thank you!

 

 

[Origami Cactus]

Most SteamVR games also support Oculus, have you tried writing "-oculus" in the launch options?

To be honest it seems like a conflict between the oculus and steam VR softwares.

I would go to the oculus app on the pc and click the "set oculus as the vr runtime" button, whatever it is called, that fixed compatibility for me. But that makes it so that both steamvr and oculusVR runtimes run at the same time, reducing performance a bit. So if the steam game supports either oculus or steamVr, add the oculus launch option to get about 20% better fps.

 

[NovaCaster]

@Origami Cactus Hey thanks for the reply. When I checked, Oculus was already set as the active runtime in the Oculus app. Generally I've been using OpenComposite to get around this problem for playing IL-2 Sturmovik. And that works for some games, but not all. I've wondered if OpenComposite could be part of the problem, but seeing as this problem started way after I started using it, I think its unlikely.

 

After trying -oculus in launch options, it certainly helps with the games that support it, so thanks for that tip. I hadn't even thought of that. Still crashes every time I try to launch SteamVR itself though.

[Origami Cactus]

On 10/17/2022 at 4:03 PM, NovaCaster said:

@Origami Cactus Hey thanks for the reply. When I checked, Oculus was already set as the active runtime in the Oculus app. Generally I've been using OpenComposite to get around this problem for playing IL-2 Sturmovik. And that works for some games, but not all. I've wondered if OpenComposite could be part of the problem, but seeing as this problem started way after I started using it, I think its unlikely.

 

After trying -oculus in launch options, it certainly helps with the games that support it, so thanks for that tip. I hadn't even thought of that. Still crashes every time I try to launch SteamVR itself though.

yeah, that is weird as I have a similar setup and SteamVR works fine. I remember it didn't work well at first, but some small tweaks and it worked fine, but I don't remember what exactly i did.

[Duke of Leamington]

@Origami Cactus @NovaCaster

I'm having similar problem. It's happening in every game I play (Elite Dangerous, No Man Sky, Alyx...) just the time is longer. I also tried

- Disabling Motion Reproject

- Installing random older NVidia Drivers (including the very first for my 3070 from November 2020)

- Disabling Wifi

- SteamVR Beta

 

I have also 3070, Ryzen, and Gigabyte aorus MB, Win 10. However in my case it's HP Reverb G2.

 

I didn't play VR for a while, more than 3 months easily. And it didn't happen before.

 

Have you find the solution?

[boobos]

I found a workaround that works flawlessly, just bypass steamVR using openXR. Super simple to use and install. Just grab the installer from their GitHub! Solved me hours of frustration (haven’t tested steamVR home portal but who uses that anyway) 

[HUNDIII]

Little late to the party, but maybe it will help somebody in the future.

 

My problem was that I didnt install the CPU graphics driver for my 7800x3d.

 

Installed AMD Adrenalin, restarted my system, it seems to work for now.