As you might have heard there have been a "few" issues with GTAIV freezing.... ughh

Anyways, I thought I'd start this thread in the hopes that anyone that has come up with any solutions or suggestions that may help. I only have a PS3 so that's the only one i can discuss with any understanding, but if you have a 360 and are experiencing similar issues, feel free to use this to help each other out as well. more than anything i want us all to be able to enjoy the game as quickly as possible.

First off, i'm considering all of this just temp fixes until a patch is released anyways, which i have no doubt will happen.

As for my experience, i tried the obvious, resetting and trying again, but the same thing kept happening. so, i deleted the game data (NOT save data) and reinstalled. it's taken 5 tries but seems to be working properly. also i noticed if you do not try to switch the radio or use your cell while driving especially at higher speeds seems to have reduced the likelyhood. i'm thinking the logic follows that if you don't try to force it to do too many things at once, which lowers the caching demand, you may not have as many problems. i've paused to change the radio and stopped moving to use my cell and it's looking good.

All suggestions are greatly appreciated. thanks!

i will also add my two bits about the other things i've heard, as far as disabling certain system settings and xmb features and i personally don't think these will have any effect. the way the ps3 is designed a certain amount of system resources are at all times dedicated to the xmb and system itself and no more, no less, so changing these settings does make sense to me. again thanks for any help!

BTW, I am NOT connected while i'm trying to play and haven't even considered trying online until i can play the game first, so that hasn't been part of my problem..... yet :$

From what I've read on the playstation forums, the game tries to connect to the network even if youre playing offline and as Rockstar are having issues its messing around.

Most people are saying disconnecting their connection or unplugging their ethernet cables before loading up the game works.

I cant say much to this, but i installed the game with no cable plugged in and ive played about 20 minutes and had no trouble.

Apparently if you play without being signed into PSN, that greatly reduces the chance of freezing.
Personally, I've had no problems, but that's what a lot of people are saying.

Edit: never mind, just saw your second post. 

 Yeah, try this and see if it works.

This all sucks, I have been playing GTA3 on my laptop, and I don't think it strictly has all the requirements so I sometimes get a message saying that the display driver has stopped working (so I have to restart etc), It seems sometimes that if I have done nothing with the laptop between turning it on and starting the game it works better (no internet etc) but sometimes it still crashes.

Very annoying. I would be more annoyed of it happening on a console though, I hope sometime in the future flash media catches up with discs for storage space because then we can get quality hardware again, The GameCube is by far the most reliable disc based game system I know of, and I am betting it is because it was not required to do anything else but play games.

after that last post, i have been playing unintertupted (knock on wood) i did go ahead and disable the screen saver so there is no background feature the "may" be using more resources to time and start itself. who knows?

that being said i am REALLY getting into it now, very cool, i love the "real world" feel to everything, awesome thick driving mechanics, you can really feel the weight of the car now, same with walking, running, climbing, etc. the guys out ther complaining about this are FoS, it has taken nothing from the gameplay and only added to an already proven formula. and just like Machina-AX's sig, even dying is friggin awesome!

once some kind of true fix to a still underlying issue i would love to setup some kind on online play with everyone, but until then, i'm not pushing my luck there right now... plus, i imagine i'll be busy or awhile ;)

http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=25705

It's the official Take Two statement.

I disabled the Internet connection and the game finally loaded again. This is very unfortunate as the multiplayer was great. It all started for us when in a multiplayer game it froze at the end of game screen and I had to do a hard reset. Never had a glitch before but since then the game has frozen on the Loading... screen. Until I did the above.

Very poor performance for such a major game.

My GTA froze up as well, multiple restarts and it wouldn't get passed the loading screen (even after a 15 minute wait). Mine happened at first during gameplay while roaming the city, then after that during a cutscene and then the stuck at loading screen began.

I'm pretty disappointed by this, okay we know there was an incident with CoD4 a while back, but it was never proven that CoD4 was the issue with the broken PS3's (chances were it was a coincidence and a demonstration of the lack of PS3 games back then), in this case it is GTA's fault for sure (I feared the worst and tried the 3 other games I own and all of them worked perfectly).

I guess it's what happens when you believe the hype...

EDIT: I should say, issue seemed to be fix for me. I deleted the install file (under game data utility) and the saved files, it didn't work the first time, nor the second but 3rd times the charm.