Borderlands

There are several potential issues a user can run into when playing Borderlands, ranging from performance issues to annoyances such as unskippable intros and low field of view.

Version Differences

The most complete version is Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition. It includes the main game as well as all of the expansions that have been released for the game. In order of release, the expansions are:

• The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
• Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot
• The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
• Claptrap's New Robot Revolution

Both the game of the year-edition and the base game as well as individual DLC's can be bought via Steam.

Issues and fixes

Quest Bugs

There are reports of people having problem on the quest "Sledge: To The Safe House". After retrieving the key , the player is ordered to go back to Shep Sanders and complete the quest, but Shep does not interact with the player, due to faulty quest instructions. The bug only seems to occur in early versions of the game, but both Xbox 360 and PC versions are affected. It can be fixed by either Going to the mine and completing the quest there, the location of the mine can be found on this page http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Sledge:_To_The_Safe_House or patching the game.

Activating DLC

Some users struggle to activate Borderlands DLC as the activation window requires you to minimize the game and then maximize. However sometimes it wont let you maximize the game and therefore not letting you to access the activation window. To solve this, while playing the game press alt + enter and it will put the game into windowed mode for you. So now when you need to minimize the game to access the activation window you should not have any problems doing so.

Alternatively, you can go into Borderlands/Binaries/DLCSetup and run the .exe file found within. DLCSetup activates The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned and Mad Moxxi and the second activates Knoxx and Robot Revolution.

Fixing Crashes on Startup

Some users, after having installed and successfully played the game on Windows XP, experience a standard "Borderlands has encountered an error and needs to close"-message after some time. No known solutions for this problem are known, but the matter is currently being investigated.

Some users may also experience a crash on startup when using multiple monitors. Disabling one or more monitors will fix this problem.

General Protection Fault / R6025 runtime error

Some users are experiencing a General Protection Fault, followed by an R6025 runtime error. Although there are multiple reasons for this, one fix is to run Windows Update and install the KB2600217 update also found here.

A collection of additional troubleshooting steps can be found on the Steam Users' Forums.

Fixing Performance Issues

Some systems, despite exceeding the recommended specs, simply do not run Borderlands well. Even after turning down graphical options, the frame rates can be much lower than would be expected. Taking these steps can help make the game much more responsive and raise frame rates significantly. If Borderlands is running poorly on an otherwise stout system, try the following:

• Add -dx9 to the command line (helps fps)
• Edit willowengine.ini in

  C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\

  Find UseVsync and set it to True (helps with tearing).
• Another known issue has been with the inclusion of Dynamic Shadows, for some users having this graphical setting turned on causes huge drops in frame rate, no matter the specs of the computer. Turning off this setting can greatly improve performance.

Borderlands Config Tool

This tool allows you to do the following and more:

• Disable Startup Movies
• Disable story introduction movies
• Disable mouse smoothing
• Disable in-game voice chat
• Windowed mode
• V-sync
• Change FOV
• Increase Difficulty (LAN only)

NOTE: Make sure to run the game and change a keybind in the options at least once before running the tool. This will create the necessary .ini files and should fix options being disabled in the tool.

Source
Borderlands Config Tool

Progress Not Being Saved

Sometimes Borderlands will not save your progress when you exit. Meaning that when you log back in, it'll be as if your last play session was a complete waste of time, no progress at all. To fix this there are two methods, the first is to alter your launch options to include the line "-nohomedir" (without the quotation marks); this is less than ideal as it will start you over from the beginning as it causes the game to create a new save directory. The alternative method, which worked for me and others out there, is to ensure that your "SaveData" folder (located at OS(C: )/Users/(Username)/My Documents/My Games/Borderlands) and all it's contents are NOT set to Hidden and/or Read Only.

Graphical tweaks

Widescreen Tweaks

Borderlands natively supports widescreen and ultra-wide resolutions through its options menu. Support is normally Vert- in all widescreen resolutions as is typical with Unreal Engine 3 games, however there is a quick solution for Hor+ widescreen gameplay in all resolutions.

Step One: Download the hack from this thread on the Borderlands official forum: http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=85874

File seems to be removed from original host, so it's available here: http://widescreengamingforum.com/f/u/BorderlandsConfigEditorv2.1.4.zip

Step Two: Run the hack and set your FOV in the middle-bottom section. You must set the FOV change to a key from the list below that, such as the forward movement key or sprinting key. When in-game the FOV will "snap" to the Hor+ value at the press of this key.

Step Three: Hit apply and close the hack, then run Borderlands as normal and press your set FOV changing key.

Note that using a vehicle in the game resets the FOV as may some other events like a cinemas playing. With the FOV set to a movement or sprint key you can quickly reset it to the Hor+ value by moving in the game after the car or cinema section is complete.

Anti-Aliasing

If forcing anti-aliasing through your graphics control panel doesn't work you could try renaming the games'-exe to UT3.exe or forcing it through a third party utility such as nHancer for Nvidia-cards or Radeonpro for AMD. Note that forcing anti-aliasing causes large performance drops. If you want to avoid the performance impact you could try a FXAA-injector instead such as this one.

Disabling Intro Movies

This unskippable intro movie can get annoying some times, but it is possible to disable it. The easiest way to do this is to use the tool mentioned above, but it can also be done manually.

Retail version

• Create a shortcut to the game on your desktop.
• Click on it with the right button > Properties.
• In the target box add -nomoviestartup.

At the end it should look like this:

"C:\Program File (x86)\Borderlands\borderlands.exe" -nomoviestartup

Using Steam

• Load up Borderland's properties by right clicking on the game
• Select Set Launch Options...
• Add -nomoviestartup and press ok.

Close the properties window. Borderlands will now launch and skip the intro videos.

Note however that this also skips cutscenes. To just disable the intro-videos open WillowEngine.ini located in

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\

Find the following entries:

[FullScreenMovie]
StartupMovies=2K_logo
StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
StartupMovies=NVidia
StartupMovies=Loading
SkippableMovies=2K_logo
SkippableMovies=Gearbox_logo
SkippableMovies=Attract
SkippableMovies=NVidia

Replace them with:

[FullScreenMovie]
;StartupMovies=2K_logo
;StartupMovies=Gearbox_logo
;StartupMovies=NVidia
;StartupMovies=Loading
SkippableMovies=2K_logo
SkippableMovies=Gearbox_logo
SkippableMovies=Attract
SkippableMovies=NVidia

Turning on 360/PS3 controller UI

• Find WillowGame.ini, it should be in

  C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config\

• Open the INI file with a text editor
• Find the line FakePlatform=-1 with CTRL+F
• Change the -1 to 1 for Xbox 360 UI

Value	Effect
-1	disabled/auto
0	PC
1	Xbox 360
2	PS3

You'll also notice in the main menu "Online Game" and "LAN Game" will change to "Xbox LIVE" and "System Link"

The loading tips and training tooltips will still show keyboard bindings

Split Screen

There is a helpful guide to getting split screen working here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2455302

Save File Location

Windows 7

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\SaveData\

The Steam version of this game has support for Steam Cloud.