How to fix Far Cry 4 Common Glitches - Black Screen - Uplay stopped working

scumbag ubisoft uplay

The iconic “Scumbag Steve” hat is certainly overused but also eloquently summarizes Uplay.

Common PC / Windows Far Cry 4 Fixes

Gaming and Windows are two things I usually don’t blog about. That said I spent several hours battling THREE separate problems with Uplay, I figured i’d spread the knowledge. Hopefully someone will find this useful. Ubisoft has some great games, so its unfortunate to see them marred so badly by the problematic Uplay service.

GameSpot even has written that users are complaining the game marred with bugs and glitches. It looks as if Ubisoft is aware of plenty of other problems, with a new patch 1.6 arriving on December 30th, 2014.

For those experiencing random crashes, 1.6 patch (weighing in at a hefty 577.4 MB) includes RAM leak fixes among other tweaks. Make sure you’re running the latest version of Far Cry.

Problem #1: I downloaded Far Cry 4 via Steam but I can’t launch the game

Apparently downloading the game from steam doesn’t install everything you need, nor does the game appear to alert you that need additional software. To remedy this problem, You’ll need to download and install uPlay, at the uPlay Website.

Problem #2: Far Cry 4 stopped saving game / Far Cry 4 won’t save game.

In my case, I was able to play Far Cry 4 for several hours before it stopped saving games. If I went to the pause menu and hit Save game, the yellow save icon flashed normally, but my mouse pointer disappeared and my keyboard stopped working. The game acted like it was still running properly, as the menu sfx continued to play and the menu background animations continued to run.

I couldn’t find a straight answer for this but I figured out a solution. It appears to be that the Uplay service (responsible for managing game saves) no longer has the correct permissions to save the game. Essentially, the Uplay service has become locked out of its own directory. To remedy this, do the following:

Locate the Uplay service, it should be under Program Files/Ubisoft/. Drag it to a safe location, such as the desktop. (We’ll need it for later).
Download the Uplay installer and run the installer.
Drag from your old Uplay folder the Save Games folder into the newly installed one.
Open up data, drag over all the missing files into the Ubisoft/data folder. Do not overwrite any folders.
Launch the Uplay application. It should take a few moments to sync up.

I highly recommend preemptively following The Honest Canadian’s fix (see below) to prevent any future problems from happening.

Problem #3: Uplay launcher has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.

Part 1 - The Honest Canadian’s fix

Another studious blogger (The Honest Canadian) posted a fix guide here, complete with pictures. However it didn’t quite work for me. First try Honest Canadian’s fix, (if it doesn’t work, you won’t harm anything).

Locate your Uplay Folder, under Program Files/Ubisoft/
Right click the folder and choose Properties.
Click the ‘Security’ Tab and click ‘Edit’.
Select your User profile (the one that reads YOUR\Users and set the Allow column of check marks to ‘Full Control’. Click Ok.
Launch the Uplay application to verify it is working.

However, this didn’t work. I attempted to declare ownership of the folder only to find the permissions had been set in such a way that all the files and folders couldn’t be changed by me or any other user.

You may find that you cannot alter any of the settings in the Uplay folder.

Verify that you are signed in as an admin. If you aren’t signed in an admin, first try the Honest Canadian’s fix.

Part 2 - The Honest Canadian’s Fix didn’t work :(

Assuming you are signed in as an admin and the Honest Canadian’s fix did not work, you’ll need to combine double whammy of my Save Game fix and the Honest Canadian Fix.

Locate the Uplay service, it should be under Program Files/Ubisoft/. Drag it to a safe location, such as the desktop. (We’ll need it for later).
Download the Uplay installer and run the installer.
Drag from your old Uplay folder the Save Games folder into the newly installed one.
Open up data, drag over all the missing files into the Ubisoft/data folder. Do not overwrite any folders.
Launch the Uplay application. It should take a few moments to sync up.
Right click the Uplay and choose Properties.
Click the ‘Security’ Tab and click ‘Edit’. Select your User profile (the one that reads YOUR\Users and set the Allow column of check marks to ‘Full Control’. Click Ok.
Launch the Uplay application to verify it is working

Problem #4: MSVCR100.dll Missing Error

I haven’t encountered this but during my searching for answers I saw this fix. If you see this, you need to Install the redistributables

Go to <path-to-game>\Support\Software\
Install all items in this folder.

Problem #5: Crashing at Start Screen

Again, this is an issue I haven’t experienced but other players report some success doing the following:

Turn uplay to offline mode and play offline campaign.
Rebooting if problem continues.

Nerd Stuff:

I probably won’t be able to help anyone troubleshoot their Far Cry problems as I’m Mac-using, unix-loving, web developer. Windows is the operating system that I boot to play games and to test Internet Explorer. I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I do enjoy games. Chances are if you’ve been gaming for a half-decade on Windows, you know as much as I do if not more.

Windows users may not understand this, but the permissions issue frustrated me immensely without the ability to just jump the terminal and type: sudo chmod -R 777 /Program Files/Ubisoft/Uplay. However, permissions are permissions and can be a pain on any OS.

Also, shout out to the Honest Canadian, whoever you are, you magnificent bastard. His/her/their(whatever preferred pronoun)’s post lead me to pin-point the save game issue as a permissions issue.

Thanks for reading! I’m all ears for feedback, and happy to respond.

Edit: Dec 4th, 2014

Added MSVCR100.dll + Start Screen fix.

Edit: Dec 30th, 2014

Added info about the Far Cry 4 1.6 patch