PC Troubleshooting: MTA:SA Install Problems

[Gandalf]

From the MTA wiki:
  Initial black screen/hanging GTA splash screens

    * MTA shows a permanent black screen or hanging GTA splash screens.

It may be necessary that during/after the logo splash screens in Grand Theft Auto you have to give some input in order to skip the videos correctly. Try to click your left-mouse button a few times, or tapping a few keys.

    * MTA shows a permanent black screen after the GTA splash screens (possibly with text in the bottom right corner).

This can be related to a lack of support for DirectX or video card features, on your system, which are needed to run the dynamically rendered menu. This dynamic menu is enabled by default. Try disabling the dynamic menu by downloading the adjusted coreconfig.xml file and placing it in our GTA San Andreas\MTA directory (overwriting any existing files).
Halt after MTA splash screen

    * Nothing happens after the 'Stop playing with yourself' splash screen

If you use nVidia GeForce, try turning off nView Desktop Manager before starting MTA.

Also try deleting GTA San Andreas settings file ("gta_sa.set") in "Documents\GTA San Andreas User Files" folder
Crash after MTA splash screen

    * MTA crashes after the 'Stop playing with yourself' logo. Both single player and the MTA: Race ran fine before.

Try downloading the latest DirectX Runtime files from Microsoft. Also check in Task Manager, if gta_sa.exe process isn't already running.

If you run at any substandard resolutions (e.g. 960x720), try to change your resolution to a commonly supported one (e.g. 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024) by launching Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in normal mode, setting the new resolution and exiting.
Assertion in CMainMenu.cpp line 106 upon launching MTASA

    * I'm getting an assertion in CMainMenu.cpp (line 106) after I have launched MTASA. I'm able to ignore it, but then game crashes after I try to connect to a server.

This is likely caused by GTASA or MTASA being installed in a path that contains non-ASCII characters (eg. Cyrillic, Polish, Japanese) in it.

To resolve this, you need to uninstall MTASA and GTASA, then install them in such paths that don't contain such characters.