What a ♥♥♥♥ ass port. Runs fine on my new PC, but I tried to load it up on the old rig and it crashes every few minutes. Tried your guide but no dice. Sank hours into playing with settings. I give up.

Yep, unfortunately 2K never released a stability update.
My guide seems to work fine "stabilizing" the game engine (an old customized Unreal Engine 3) internal timings which seems very sensitive, at least for most of users.
Please specify your HW and OS when reporting, so that we can make some statistics and try to find a cure...

Runs great on the new rig.
rtx 3080
i7 9700k
16g ram

Constant crashes on the old rig.
gtx 770
i5 4670k
8g ram

Finally caved and bought the original bioshock (not remastered) for a few bucks, and it runs like a charm. The old gal runs inifinite pretty well also, pretty disappointed she couldn't handle the remaster. To be fair, they did make significant improvements to the visuals on the remaster... though I'm not sure that's the cause of the instability using my old hardware.

Appreciate you putting all this troubleshooting info together for us.

I'm currently testing the Remasters on my new PC and they work like a charm so far. I finished Bioshock 1 Remaster twice without a single crash. I've already finished Minerva's Den Remaster without any crashes and I'm now playing Bioshock 2 Remaster. I'm already halfway through and still no crashes. Looks like I can finally enjoy the remasters from start to finish now.

I used your guide to get the games working on my old machine and your solution was really the only one that actually worked. You were a great help. Fortunately that's no longer necessary, but I still wanted to thank you for your help back on my old PC.

Interesting... Who knows, maybe new NVidia gfx cards + new drivers are more reliable about core performance.

REGARDING BIOSHOCK REMASTERED
BTW, just noticed the exe is different with the Epic version. Just DRM stuff, or maybe the new compiled exe is more stable? Who knows...
https://i.ibb.co/QbmXN6Y/image.png

EDIT: just double checked and I can confirm the version from Epic is slightly different:

EPIC (Version.ini) 1.0.127355:
[Version]
Configuration=bioshockpcpatchfinal
ChangeNumber=127355
ChangeTime="21:06:04"
ChangeDate="2007/11/29"
BuildTime="Thu Nov 29 21:06:04 Eastern Standard Time 2007"

STEAM (Version.ini) 1.0.122872:
[Version]
Branch=master
Config=Final
ChangeNumber=122872
BuildTime="Sat, 14 Oct 2017 00:00:40 GMT"

I was testing the epic games version, and surprisingly it looks more stable than steam version. I had zero crashes at the locations which they would most occur.

Originally posted by hexaae:

REGARDING BIOSHOCK REMASTERED
BTW, just noticed the exe is different with the Epic version. Just DRM stuff, or maybe the new compiled exe is more stable? Who knows...
https://i.ibb.co/QbmXN6Y/image.png

EDIT: just double checked and I can confirm the version from Epic is slightly different:

EPIC (Version.ini) 1.0.127355:
[Version]
Configuration=bioshockpcpatchfinal
ChangeNumber=127355
ChangeTime="21:06:04"
ChangeDate="2007/11/29"
BuildTime="Thu Nov 29 21:06:04 Eastern Standard Time 2007"

STEAM (Version.ini) 1.0.122872:
[Version]
Branch=master
Config=Final
ChangeNumber=122872
BuildTime="Sat, 14 Oct 2017 00:00:40 GMT"

If we look at the steam depot updates, we can see the game has been in the works for quite some time now, it would be a shame if it's just a drm update.
It would be even worse if it's not just a drm update but they never actually update the steam version.

If someone wants to try something a bit more "extreme"... and force these Bioshock games in Vulkan instead of DX11 (!!) here is how:
1. download https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases dxvk (yes is for Linux but works also on Win!)
2. for Bio 1 Remastered, copy x32\dxgi.dll and x32\d3d11.dll from the tar.gz archive to "...\BioShock Remastered\Build\Final\" where is the BioshockHD.exe

Launch the game (in VK mode) :)

N.B.
dxvk works really fine with most games I've tested but is still an experimental wrapper. Known drawbacks: Bioshock 1 or 2 Remastered will show some stuttering entering a new area when loading new shaders to be converted on the fly for VK (only the first time!).

Originally posted by hexaae:

Vulkan mode

If someone wants to try something a bit more "extreme"... and force these Bioshock games in Vulkan instead of DX11 (!!) here is how:
1. download https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases dxvk (yes is for Linux but works also on Win!)
2. copy x32\dxgi.dll and x32\d3d11.dll from the tar.gz archive to "...\BioShock Remastered\Build\Final\" where is the BioshockHD.exe

Launch the game (in VK mode) :)

N.B.
dxvk works really fine with most games I've tested but is still an experimental wrapper. Known drawbacks: Bioshock 1 or 2 Remastered will show some stuttering entering a new area when loading new shaders to be converted on the fly for VK (only the first time!).

yeah, I'm going for it as i love the icons mod floating around along with a stable game.

Well, this is weird... I started to play again Bio Remastered and found out that without anyone of my guide fixes, under Win 10 2H1H + NVidia 512.69, is now stable!
As a side-effect if you don't fix it with the shim DisableDXMaximizedWinowedMode (aka "Disable full screen optimization") you can't adjust brightness (.INI brightness settings are ignored!).

This means that if you play it without any fix, it will be more stable but you can't adjust brightness.... that's wierd but things keep changing with newer Win + NVidia updates...

P.S.
For the crash test with Bio 1 I've found that pressing H (hints UI) frequently can easily throw in infamous "Visual C++ Error R6025 - pure virtual function call", only when brightness control is functioning...

Ok, it still crashed once when I pressed 'H'...

Considering the steam depots are still pretty actively updated and "qatest2" imply it's being tested by the quality assurance staff, I seriously hope they are planning to update the steam version to resolve every issue the engine has.

If my memory is good, Bioshock RTX was part of the Nvidia leak. Maybe it's related. I hope so a least. Could they be waiting for the right moment to announce it? Maybe they are waiting the PS5/XSX version to be release ready.
I don't know.

We can only pray one day they'll fix chapter 1 & 2 for stability because they are true masterpieces for lore and storytelling, especially considedring today's dystopian world direction... ;-)

Fingers crossed.