@gtavjamal Yeah, this thread got offtrack, but just to clarify this position, I'm not a fan of Steam, not at all. Just saying I don't have any issues with updates. If I was on Epic I would find a solution real fast. Honestly I would love to play my games without any f***** launcher, or subscriptions, or social clubs etc. I don't want to have to open an account and login to play my SP games - so in that respect I hate Valve, I hate Ubi, I hate Epic, etc.

@gtavjamal Not sure what Steam has to do with this thread, but I'll take GTA5 on Steam over Epic or retail any day because I can stop the updates with ease. As for Valve, i don't really care about the company but they arguably made the best SP ever in HL2 and one of the best coop games in L4D2.

@gtavjamal i didn't view the video but if you mean reinstalling GTA5 when they say a fresh copy, i couldn't disagree more.

I've never reinstalled GTA5 despite thousands of hours of modding. A corrupt save game file once, a couple verify integrities, that's all.

@Aurora11 the sad part is that they can include a warning in the installer text. OpenIV at least warns you when it nags you to update update.rpf and then overwrites all your customized files. It makes me cringe at the thought of how many users lost their addons and game stability after accepting that less than clear warning, likely feeling they needed to update and not having backups.

@Aurora11 Sorry to hear that, but other forum members can hopefully benefit from your story. Thank you for sharing.

The concept of the OIV is well-intentioned but falls short for so many reasons. OIV creators are selfish. Well not all of them. Half are, the other half mean well but are clueless.The OIV modder wants to make sure their Mod is properly installed, even at the expense of others, not taking into account that some of the files they include for installation will be much older than the files they might replace on your system.

In this post let's look at why OIVs suck and why you should learn how to manually install mods.

1. OIVs don't have uninstallers. Some do, but read on and you'll see why that doesn't make any sense. So good luck removing an OIV mod if you change your mind or if it conflicts with other mods, or worst case crashes your GTA5.

2. OIVs replace your dlclist.xml. Many if not most do this. You then lose all the addon mod entries you made into that dlclist yourself - your addons will no longer load until you add those lines back. Good luck. (Note: an OIV can be written to insert a line but most modders don't seem to know that).

3. OIVs replace your gameconfig.xml. Again not all do, but many or most will. The gameconfig.xml they install is highly unlikely to match an updated game version. So you will end up with an old gameconfig, almost certainly a crash, and if you did any customizations yourself, guess what, they are all gone.

4. OIVs overwrite your files. Aside from dlclist.xml and gameconfig.xml, an OIV can potentially overwrite many other files - creating conflicts or crashes with other mods. An OIV doesn't check for existing files nor file versions. Their file could be from 2013 whereas the current file (eg. gameconfig) is from 2022. So it doesn't care about the possibility of file conflicts.

5. OIVs can be poorly written. The average modder is hopefully very knowledgeable with 3D modelling but doesn't necessarily understand XML, the concept of paths, and the overall Window file system. This is evident when you look at the innards (assembly.xml) of some OIVs and notice the planned installation of files that are not even included in the OIV or paths that just don't make any sense.

Manual Installation
An OIV is an archive. Think a rar, or zip, or 7z. You can extract the contents just as you would a zip file and without even changing the extension if you use an app like the excellent freeware 7z.

Once extracted, you will notice files such as dlc.rpf, gameconfig.xml, dlclist.xml, etc, generally (but not always) in a folder called Content. By inspecting those files you will know what will be installed and which of your files will be overwritten if you do an automatic rather than manual install.

But how do you know where to install those files? Look once more in the extracted files and you will see a text file called assembly.xml. Although not the easiest file to understand this file will tell you exactly where in your Mods folder to put the files contained in Content. With practice this will be easy although an OIV with dozens of files to be installed in dozens of paths will be a PITA. Remember you will need to update dlclist.xml yourself, if relevant, manually.

Warning: you need to be careful when reading the assembly.xml locations (paths) because the GTA file/folder structure has many folders, for example X64, that can exist in different paths.

Hot tip: do a backup of key files whether you choose a manual or automatic install. This holds true for all mods, not just OIVs. Also, if you inspect the Content folder of the OIV and don't see any issues (i.e. no gameconfig or dlclist.xml files that would replace yours) go ahead and do an automatic install.

Advanced Users
If you inspect the content of the archive and realize all is good except for some files, you can remove certain files (such as dlclist.xml) from the Content folder, you can also remove the instructions to install those files from assembly.xml, and repackage the OIV. You now have a modified OIV that can be installed automatically with OpenIV but without the offending files.

Insert line in Assembly.xml - an example
Here is an example of how a modder can insert a new dlc line for their mod without screwing up your whole system. Path reflects where I personally keep my dlc.
The example is specific to my own setup which uses comments as headers for organization, but the syntax is the same and the location can easily be the top or bottom of the dlclist.xml file (see last item in this post)

<archive path="update\update.rpf" createIfNotExist="False" type="RPF7">
<text path="common\data\dlclist.xml" createIfNotExist="False">
<insert where="After" line="*&lt;!--CARS --&gt;*" condition="Mask">&lt;Item&gt;./DLC/Cars/American/fairlane64/&lt;/Item&gt;</insert>
</text>
</archive>

As the last line in your dlclist.xml, just before the closing path tag.
<insert where="Before" line="*&lt;/Paths&gt;*" condition="Mask">&lt;Item&gt;./DLC/Cars/American/fairlane64/&lt;/Item&gt;</insert>

output:
<Item>./DLC/Cars/American/fairlane64/</Item>
</Paths>
</SMandatoryPacksData>

@gtavjamal not a traffic issue, cars are there, issue is with bridge dlc, collision is there but not the textures. I actually removed the bridge because it looked like crap. I didn't care about connecting LC with LS.

@fleety707 You have a poor install. Go back and look at the instructions. You're not missing textures where the cars appear to float in the air, you are missing a bridge DLC.

@LeinKlein66 OIVs are total crap but they don't impact your game files, only your mod ones. I have trouble imagining why you would need to reinstall GTA5 unless you were screwing around with the vanilla game files - so NO, don't reinstall the game.

What the OIV likely did, depending on the mod and when you installed it, is it replaced your gameconfig.xml.

So, you might need to reinstall a gameconfig.xml mod. But you also need to rule out what I call "bad luck" which is when a single mod is capable of crashing your game, either because it just doesn't play well with your configuration or because it is badly designed/unforgiving, or it just sucks up too many resources for your PC to handle.

Install an updated gameconfig.xml that matches your version of GTA5) and test for stability.

Can't help more than that without more info. Try the topic here Asking for Help

@a63nt-5m1th Yep. Gotta love those servers where there are 200 channels when 1 would suffice, complete with the cutest anime emojis....makes me wanna barf.