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Constant menu crashes since latest patch

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G

Green1917

Fresh user
#1
I really want to jump back in with this playthrough, but every time i open a menu, whether journal, inventory, cyberware, or map, there's like a 1:2 chance that it will hard crash. Jumping from one menu to another increases the chances. Doing nothing until everything loads decreases the chances, but if you then move to another menu you're right back at high chance of a crash while it loads.

Please, this is the worst series of crashes I have had in this game since launch. I didn't really go through the pain of launch cause I had a 980ti at the time, so even though I owned the game I had to wait to upgrade my PC to play it, and by that time the launch problems had begun to be resolved. So this is the worst crashes I have ever experienced in this game :(

I tried workarounds I found: verified files, disabled xbox game bar overlay (apparently overlays are crashing cyberpunk), setting cyberpunk to launch as administrator, nothing has fixed it.
 
LeKill3rFou

LeKill3rFou

Mentor
#2
Hi,
First of all, at time, did you use mods?
If so, you might have to perform a clean install of the game just in case :

How do I perform a clean install of the game? — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
Then you had a 980ti at time, but now, what's your specs? And be sure you meet the game requirements :

Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
Also, take a look of everything suggested by the support and if nothing work, send a ticket to the support ("contact us" button).

My game crashes — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
 
G

Green1917

Fresh user
#3
LeKill3rFou said:
Hi,
First of all, at time, did you use mods?
If so, you might have to perform a clean install of the game just in case :

How do I perform a clean install of the game? — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
Then you had a 980ti at time, but now, what's your specs? And be sure you meet the game requirements :

Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
Also, take a look of everything suggested by the support and if nothing work, send a ticket to the support ("contact us" button).

My game crashes — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com
Click to expand...
this is an entirely new computer. 5950x cpu, 3080 gpu, 32gb of ram, and i'm on a 980pro 4tb NVME SSD. i will try the clean install, the only mod i usually use is the one that allows me to console command misty to reset her when she gets stuck and i can't do tarot with her anymore. that's the only fix i have ever found for that. not currently at that part yet in the game so i don't need it yet.
 
Last edited:
devivre

devivre

Moderator
#4
yes, a clean installation will is still worth a shot even if it’s just one mod.

You can also use the last link that was mentioned to send a ticket to support:

My game crashes — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.
support.cdprojektred.com support.cdprojektred.com

But before clicking on Contact Us to send a ticket, I would recommend trying the suggestions from this article, especially when it comes to reinstalling gpu drivers. Although some driver versions are less stable than others.

And yeah, overlays can sometimes be problematic, no matter if it’s steam, gog, nvidia or other overlay features.

You can also reinstall Visual C++ (links can be found here under Nr. 4: https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc/sp-technical/issue/1568/the-game-is-not-launching-5)
 
G

Green1917

Fresh user
#5
i will try those other suggestions, fresh install did nothing. i have no overlays, no steam no nvidia and no xbox gamebar.
 
Bartinga2077

Bartinga2077

Forum veteran
#8
Green1917 said:
clean uninstall and reinstall of nvidia drivers did nothing either :( next is reinstalling Visual C++ and then trying older drivers.
Click to expand...
I asked Chat for you.

"What you’re describing isn’t a generic “crash” issue anymore — the pattern points very specifically to UI asset / shader streaming, which is why the usual fixes haven’t helped.

A few key clues in your post:
  • Crashes only happen when opening menus (inventory, journal, map, cyberware)
  • Rapidly switching menus increases crash chance
  • Waiting until everything finishes loading reduces crash chance
  • Fresh game reinstall and clean GPU driver install did nothing
That combination almost always means the game is crashing mid-load when UI shaders or UI assets are being streamed in, not because of corrupted game files or unstable hardware.

Important thing a “clean reinstall” does NOT touch​

Uninstalling the game (even properly) does not remove shader caches or UI cache data that survive between patches. After major updates, reused shaders compiled under an older version can cause exactly this kind of menu-only crash.

Before trying anything else, I strongly recommend manually deleting the following and then rebooting:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077
%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\DXCache
%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\GLCache

(The Cyberpunk folder will be rebuilt automatically on next launch.)

This step alone has fixed menu-crash issues for a lot of people after recent patches, especially on RTX 30-series cards.

Also worth testing (even if gameplay is fine)​

Menus use a different render path than gameplay. For testing stability, try launching once with:
  • DLSS off
  • Frame Generation off
  • Reflex off
Just to rule out a UI redraw / upscaler interaction. You can turn them back on later if it stabilizes.

About mods (even “just one”)​

The console mod you mentioned almost certainly relies on Cyber Engine Tweaks. Even if it’s not currently installed or active, CET can leave runtime hooks or config files outside the main install directory, and those are not removed by a game reinstall.

Make sure none of these exist in the game folder:

red4ext
r6
archive/pc/mod

and no .asi files in bin/x64.

Why this matches your symptoms​

Menus load a lot of UI meshes, icons, shaders, and character preview assets asynchronously. If something invalid is accessed mid-load, the game hard crashes. That’s why:
  • waiting helps
  • menu hopping makes it worse
  • gameplay itself is stable
At this point, this looks much more like a post-patch UI pipeline issue than a broken system or bad install.

If clearing caches + disabling upscalers for a test run doesn’t help, then trying an older NVIDIA driver makes sense — but right now you’re skipping the step most likely to matter."

%LOCALAPPDATA% needs to be typed into the run command. Press Win + R to open it, then type it in.
See if it helps.
 
G

Green1917

Fresh user
#9
Bartinga2077 said:
I asked Chat for you.

"What you’re describing isn’t a generic “crash” issue anymore — the pattern points very specifically to UI asset / shader streaming, which is why the usual fixes haven’t helped.

A few key clues in your post:
  • Crashes only happen when opening menus (inventory, journal, map, cyberware)
  • Rapidly switching menus increases crash chance
  • Waiting until everything finishes loading reduces crash chance
  • Fresh game reinstall and clean GPU driver install did nothing
That combination almost always means the game is crashing mid-load when UI shaders or UI assets are being streamed in, not because of corrupted game files or unstable hardware.

Important thing a “clean reinstall” does NOT touch​

Uninstalling the game (even properly) does not remove shader caches or UI cache data that survive between patches. After major updates, reused shaders compiled under an older version can cause exactly this kind of menu-only crash.

Before trying anything else, I strongly recommend manually deleting the following and then rebooting:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077
%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\DXCache
%LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\GLCache

(The Cyberpunk folder will be rebuilt automatically on next launch.)

This step alone has fixed menu-crash issues for a lot of people after recent patches, especially on RTX 30-series cards.

Also worth testing (even if gameplay is fine)​

Menus use a different render path than gameplay. For testing stability, try launching once with:
  • DLSS off
  • Frame Generation off
  • Reflex off
Just to rule out a UI redraw / upscaler interaction. You can turn them back on later if it stabilizes.

About mods (even “just one”)​

The console mod you mentioned almost certainly relies on Cyber Engine Tweaks. Even if it’s not currently installed or active, CET can leave runtime hooks or config files outside the main install directory, and those are not removed by a game reinstall.

Make sure none of these exist in the game folder:

red4ext
r6
archive/pc/mod

and no .asi files in bin/x64.

Why this matches your symptoms​

Menus load a lot of UI meshes, icons, shaders, and character preview assets asynchronously. If something invalid is accessed mid-load, the game hard crashes. That’s why:
  • waiting helps
  • menu hopping makes it worse
  • gameplay itself is stable
At this point, this looks much more like a post-patch UI pipeline issue than a broken system or bad install.

If clearing caches + disabling upscalers for a test run doesn’t help, then trying an older NVIDIA driver makes sense — but right now you’re skipping the step most likely to matter."

%LOCALAPPDATA% needs to be typed into the run command. Press Win + R to open it, then type it in.
See if it helps.
Click to expand...
did not work :(
 
Bartinga2077

Bartinga2077

Forum veteran
#12
Green1917 said:
i actually just did a clean install after disabling steam's "shader precache loading" which i didn't realize steam even had, and now the problem is gone.
Click to expand...
Glad you solved it. Mentioned it to Chat and it produced this:

"That reply actually confirms the diagnosis — and it’s a really useful data point.
Here’s what it tells us, very clearly.

What actually fixed it (in technical terms)​

Steam’s “Shader Pre-Caching” was re-injecting incompatible shaders back into the game after every reinstall.
So even when the OP:
  • deleted local shader caches
  • reinstalled the game
  • reinstalled GPU drivers
Steam was silently doing this on first launch:
  • downloading precompiled Vulkan/DX shader blobs
  • inserting them into the pipeline before Cyberpunk rebuilt its own shaders
Result:
  • gameplay mostly fine
  • menus crash, because UI shaders are different and more timing-sensitive
Disabling Steam’s shader pre-cache finally allowed Cyberpunk to build a clean, patch-correct shader set.
That’s why:
  • a reinstall after disabling it worked
  • earlier reinstalls didn’t
  • menu-only crashes disappeared instantly

Why this was such a nasty trap​

1️⃣ Steam shader cache survives everything​

Steam’s shader cache is:
  • global
  • invisible
  • re-applied automatically
  • not cleared by GPU driver reinstalls
So from the user’s perspective:
“I did a clean reinstall and cleared caches”
Click to expand...
…but Steam quietly put the bad shaders right back.

2️⃣ Menus expose the problem first​

Cyberpunk menus:
  • use more exotic shader permutations
  • recompile frequently
  • swap resources aggressively
So they crash long before gameplay does.
That’s why this manifested only as menu crashes.

This also explains why HAGS / SMT might help but weren’t required​

Those settings reduce timing pressure, which can:
  • mask bad shaders
  • reduce crash frequency
But the root cause was still invalid precompiled shaders.

The “correct” takeaway (and what CDPR should honestly document)​

This wasn’t:
  • bad hardware
  • bad drivers
  • mods
  • user error
It was:
Steam injecting incompatible precompiled shaders after a game patch
Click to expand...
This is especially risky for:
  • DX12 games
  • games with heavy UI rendering
  • engines that aggressively stream shaders (like Redengine)

What would be valuable to add to the thread (optional)​

If you want to help others, a great follow-up reply would be:
For anyone else hitting this: disabling Steam’s “Shader Pre-Caching” before reinstalling fixed the menu crashes for me. Steam was reapplying old precompiled shaders even after clean installs.
Click to expand...
That one sentence could save days of frustration for the next person."

Bottom line: At all times play Cyberpunk with Shader Pre-Caching: OFF
It's ON by default the first time Steam is installed.
 
Last edited:

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