NFS Shift 2 Crash First Race Fix

Thank you for posting this, @TipeXX3. 

I have edited your link to point to the official Nvidia website - we try to minimize links to non-official sources here on AHQ. 

Of course!  Thanks for the reminder!  I had a Phyz card, back in the day...

Note that there is a separate issue where Shift 2 crashes when doing quick race or some career events (may be most of them, but not all of them). The only solution so far is to disconnect the PC from the internet. I and other players have had this problem. Although nothing was changed on the PC (client) side, this crash bug was probably there all along, but some change on the server side has now exposed that bug. Again the fix is to disconnect the PC from the internet.

In my particular case, I'm able to reproduce this bug, without being signed in, since my password has changed since I first played Shift 2. So although not logged in, having internet connected results in crash at some career events or quick race, but disconnecting my PC from internet solves this problem.

Hello.  Sorry to bump this thread, or whatever happens honestly, I'm not sure how this forum works.

I'm just a wandering Google warrior who was trying to fix Shift 2 crashing...Career, Single Player, any option that loaded a race would crash to desktop.  Video driver update/rollback, game client reinstall, all sorts of Steam troubleshooting shenanigans, nothing would budge the crashes.

I came across this post, figured "eh what the hell", installed that version of PhysX and now Shift 2 works fine.  Just wanted to give a breath of hope to any future google warriors who come across this post - the PhysX fix works for me at least.  Give it a shot.

Note: I had to uninstall the previous (newer) version of PhysX to install this one; it wouldn't allow the install for an older version.  So keep that in mind if you play newer games that may not be 100% compatible, you'll either have to put up with the possible performance issues or juggle PhysX installs.  Up to you.

glhf and take care.

*edit* I forgot to mention; I tried the "launch offline" thing and the crashing persisted at the same point of loading the race.

The first race (the 2 lap practice run prologue) crash only occurs with the Origin version of Shift 2. The prior EA Store version or the EA DVD version do not have this problem. Some have reported a crash in quick race, and perhaps in some career mode events, but none of the early career mode events. With the EA versions, if you do get a crash at a particular race, the fix is to disconnect your system from the internet (I first read about this at Steam community). Since there have been no updates to Shift 2 in years, the fact that disconnecting from the internet solves the problem would indicate that something changed on the EA/Origin server side, but why a server side change causes a game crash is puzzling. 

One known change on the EA/Origin server side, is that Limited Edition content, and/or any promotional stuff like the Dr Pepper Camaro, no longer gets enabled when a player logs in. Unless a player has backed up a save with that content, there's no way to get that content back. 

Thanks TipeXX3

The nvidia PhysX driver worked for my Radeon RX580

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