I fixed the issue of -

"Social Club failed to initialize. Error Code: 4"

when using ENB and its d3d9.dll on Rockstar Games Launcher and Steam version too.

1. Simply download these old Social Club files :

https://disk.yandex.com/d/6d9Ptm_230IVBA

1. And replace them in C:\Program Files (x86)\

2. From now on, launch Rockstar Games Launcher with -scOfflineOnly - add to the shortcut:

"D:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Launcher\LauncherPatcher.exe" -scOfflineOnly

(it's to prevent Social Club "You are not currently signed in" error after game launch)

1. After launching the game after some longer time -

if you see libcef.dll error on game startup, it's because of RGL update - repeat steps 1 and 2

Now, GTA IV (with current RGL 1.0.71.1428) works fine with ENB (Excellent ENB is the one I found compatible with RGL/1.0.8.0 version and the Episodes).

Note. I had a weird issue quite recently (06.04.2023) where the game after RGL update, and even after restoring the files from before the patch, hung on black screen with working cursor on launch. After few tries, it started to work when I task switched, and it started to work every time from now on. Not sure what happened (the new game update wasn't the culprit - I prevented the RGL update before, by... leaving below 1GB free disk space on RGL installation disk, so it failed updating but launched RGL). Seeing below, looks like I had similar issue before, but task switching worked, but here, not. Once I even had to log out from the system because I couldn't close the game. And if I somehow closed, offline mode never updates the state of closed game vs online mode, so I needed to restart RGL everytime I force-closed the game.

PS. You can make a backup of Social Club folder before replacing the folder, just in case, but I never needed it, and the game will force update you from time to time anyway and also open the launcher in normal mode from time to time so you can go offline after one unsuccessful launch with Social Club sign in error).

The files I linked above come from Social Club Latest Setup.exe - v. 2.0.5.6. I extracted it using 7zip instead of installing it.

https://www.gezginler.net/indir/social-club.html

During extraction, I clicked none to all (it will remain x86 files of Social Club files which the game uses - if you click replace all, it will overwrite the same $0 folder with x64 files).

And in the end, I simply overwrote current Social Club files in Program Files (x86) and it worked.

(I don't know how older Social Club from June 2020 affects other R* games, but it works with current RGL 1.0.71.1428 and GTA IV at least. Should work with Max Payne 3 too, and other games on RGL like GTA V and RDR2 are x64, so won't be affected by these files.

If you're afraid that RGL will overwrite your modded files at some point, you will launch it with -scOfflineOnly startup parameter (now it's compulsory to even start the game with ENB at all) till it won't prevent the game from launch 1) by forcing you to update the game before even launching it in offline mode or 2) till the error about asking you to launch in online mode once due to longer account inactivity or longer not launching of the game (maybe retry without internet connection, but I'm not sure here). So far, none of the two game updates I had in RGL version broke ENB itself and its files (RGL updates will just force you to restore the old RGL files, nothing more) so rather chill out.

As for ENB Vulkan Reshade - task switching can be broken AF, in that case - don't even try alt tabbing. Also, sometimes you can be forced to task switch on game startup if it gets stuck for too long. You can later encounter resolution decreased, and you will need to change it manually.

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You can even use ENB with DXVK, but you may not notice any difference on some configurations unless you use 1.0.7.0 "[DXVK] Improves framerates on 1.0.7.0 to be closer to other patches, but causes a performance drop or no effect at all on other versions". But you can try it out following these steps:

If your ENB has DX9Settings.ini, edit:

[General]

DumpAll = false

ProxyLib = dxvk.dll

OverrideMethod = 0

If you don't have DX9Settings.ini, create it.

Because if your enbseries.ini's first three lines are:

EnableProxyLibrary=true

InitProxyFunctions=true

ProxyLibrary=dax.dll

and dax.dll is present in your game folder it fixes SSAO and shadows if I'm not mistaken, hence some ENBs redirects to it, and you shouldn't change it. If dax.dll is not present, change ProxyLibrary in enbseries.ini to dxvk.dll.

In the next step, extract DXVK, go to x32\d3d9.dll and rename it to dxvk.dll and place it in GTA IV directory. Tested using DXVK 1.10.1. And also, I found a report that -noprecache in commandline.txt is not recommended while using DXVK. If you want the best performance using DXVK, you need to downgrade to 1.0.7.0 version. But RGL version also works.

For Steam version users, disable Vulkan shader caching in the Steam options

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How I found out the culprit of error code 4?

What pointed me out that Social Club itself might be a culprit, is that game files in root dir responsible for core game initialization weren't updated for me at all since times when it worked (besides bin file which is RGL leftover about downloaded files state - maybe some files in subdirectories changed) so I left game files alone. And of course the error itself is about Social Club. Previously, ENB worked for me using RGL version back in April 2020. Also, I started using DXVK today unknowingly that R* broke ENBs, and suddenly appeared error of "the procedure entry point [here comes some Directx call] could not be located in the dynamic link library libcef.dll" and location to Social Club was provided. When I pressed OK, the game still loaded, but it ended with error code 4. Interestingly, the libcef.dll error disappeared when I applied very old Social Club files, but they were not compatible with RGL yet and simply found a version from June 2020 instead of 2015 which works, and when I delete DXVK the error also doesn't show up. Probably without DXVK I wouldn't come up with the idea of messing with Social Club files and that the culprit is somewhere there.