Game freezes continously, and randomly.

[Damun]

Game freezes continously, and randomly.

I'm having issues with this game freezing, it locks up even the input, I cannot alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del to get out. I have to hard reset my computer to recover.

I've tried all the fixes that everyone suggests, that is rolling back GPU drivers (I'm an nVidia user) I've turned down the graphics, I swapped between 30, 60 and unlimited frame rates. (The crashes actually happen more often on Unlimited and 60 FPS)

It just randomly freezes, it's locked up on me on so many different occasions that it's impossible for me to point a cause at. This includes going to menu, cutscenes, hell just running around or even just doing NOTHING.

I have even done the tweaks in the nVidia control panel that have been suggested many times.

If anything the freezing has become even more frequent with the 1.03 patch.

Here are my current specs, and I play the game on a mix of high and meduim.

Intel Core i7 3770k 3.5 ghz quadcore
nVidia Geforce GTX 680
16 Gigs ddr3 ram @ 1600 mhz
Windows 8.1 64 bit.

I'm at my wits end and I don't know what to do. I fear I'm damaging my OS just by having to hard reset all the time to just get back to my desktop.

 

[Amioran]

If it crashes less with locked fps at 30 it can be a matter of poor ventilation. Try to test the temperatures in your system to be sure that all is fine. If the temperatures are fine try to underclock the GPU and see what happens. There can be many reasons why you can have this problem and it is not easy to pinpoint the problem immediately. To do so you have to test things one at a time.

 

[Myasoyedov]

Maybe you can try ending witcher3.exe in cmd instead of reset. That's what I do. I push Windows key + R and type cmd and enter and type taskkill /im witcher3.exe /f and computer is usable again. Maybe this will work for you too.

 

[Damun]

If it crashes less with locked fps at 30 it can be a matter of poor ventilation. Try to test the temperatures in your system to be sure that all is fine. If the temperatures are fine try to underclock the GPU and see what happens. There can be many reasons why you can have this problem and it is not easy to pinpoint the problem immediately. To do so you have to test things one at a time.

Nope, I have a very open case, many fans, and the highest temp my GPU gets is 75 degrees celcius, this is the only game that does this. And as I said it crashes more often on the 60 and unlimited, which people have stated that fixes their issues.

Maybe you can try ending witcher3.exe in cmd instead of reset. That's what I do. I push Windows key + R and type cmd and enter and type taskkill /im witcher3.exe /f and computer is usable again. Maybe this will work for you too.

Once again, as stated in my original post. ALL INPUT is non responsive. The only thing that continues is sound.

 

[garrion81]

Damun, just out of curiosity, do you have any sort of overclock on your GPU? I'm having the same issue, and it's been making me crazy too as none of the fixes work. However, I'm seeing more and more people stating that running their cards at stock or just under stock clocks is fixing the issue.

 

[Damun]

Damun, just out of curiosity, do you have any sort of overclock on your GPU? I'm having the same issue, and it's been making me crazy too as none of the fixes work. However, I'm seeing more and more people stating that running their cards at stock or just under stock clocks is fixing the issue.

I do not, I've got it at stock speed, because of EA's Frostbyte engine is very bad with OCed card. It's all stock speed.

 

[Myasoyedov]

I have OC card but crashes doesnt fix when I downclock it to the stock speed.

 

[Damun]

Are they crashes to desktop? If so that's a completely different issue. If it's freezing up like mine, then welcome to my party of the unsolvable problem that requires waiting from CD Projekt Red to release a fix.

 

[elmoh]

Sent the following support ticket to CDPR today:
"I've had the Witcher 3 since launch and right from the beginning it has crashed at random intervals. The first crash I ever got was within 15 minutes of play. Sometimes I can play for up to an hour without it crashing. The game crashes in cutscenes, while playing and in the inventory screen.

When it crashes I often get a purple-ish tint on some parts of the screen other times I just get a black screen. Every time I can still here the music playing in the background. When a crash occurs the only way for me to get my computer unstuck is for me to hard reset my computer. Alt-tab, ctrl-alt-delete, hitting the windows key doesn't work.

I have tried all the fixes suggested in a sticky thread in your PC-technical issues part of the Witcher 3 forum. I've tweaked some stuff in the NVIDIA control panel, underclocked my graphics card, turned off V-sync in game, set FPS cap to unlimited and put the game in full screen.

I have an Intel i7 processor, an ASUS GTX780 3GB graphics card and 16GB of RAM. I have tons of games and the only other game I've encountered almost the exact same issue with is Dragon Age: Inquisition and EA/Bioware never fixed that one for me. If you can't fix this for me and alot of other people with the same issue I would appreciate a refund so I might buy it for my PS4 instead. Sadly I would prefer to play it on my computer."

---------- Updated at 01:37 PM ----------

CDPR sent me the following automatic reply:
-----LAUNCHING AND STABILITY ISSUES-----

CHANGE DISPLAY MODE (FULLSCREEN vs BORDERLESS WINDOW vs WINDOWED)
Please try the different modes to see which works for you. Borderless window is the default option, and is the most compatible one
While it's a natural instinct for PC gamers to switch to fullscreen, please resist this temptation if you see the game crashing on you, after setting this option.

UNPLUG SECONDARY MONITOR (IF USING MULTIPLE DIFFERENT MONITORS)
We suspect that The Witcher 3 cannot handle a situation where you have two monitors, and they have very different refresh rates. Even if this isn't the case for you, try physically unplugging your secondary monitor, and launch the game.

CHECK FOR INTERFERENCE FROM GOG GALAXY (NOT CONFIRMED)
It's possible that this happens due to anti-virus/firewall software blocking Galaxy. Make sure to add Galaxy to your security software's trusted applications list.
If it doesn't help, please try the following:
1) Shut down GOG Galaxy,
2) Go to the game's bin\x64\ subfolder (by default: C:\GOG Games\The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt\bin\x64),
3) Rename the galaxy.dll file, or move it to a different location.
If this helps, contact us immediately to confirm this.

UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS
Always make sure to have the most recent WHQL-certified (and non-beta) drivers for your card. You can find them the websites below, depending on your card manufactuter.
NVIDIA (the drivers from 2015.5.18 are the first ones speficially tuned for The Witcher 3):
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
ATI (AMD):
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
We generally do not advise auto-detecting drivers. Ideally, please select your graphics card manually to find the right driver for you.

DISABLE GEFORCE EXPERIENCE
If you use GeForce Experience, please make sure that you disable Shadowplay before launching the game. If disabling Shadowplay wasn't helpful, please disable GeForce Experience altogether, and make sure that you reset graphics device settings after that. To do this:
1) right-click on your desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel,
2) click Manage 3D Settings,
3) in the upper-right corner, click Restore Defaults.
To disable GeForce Experience, find its icon in your system tray (lower-right corner), right-click it and select "Exit".

CHECK MINIMAL REQUIREMENTS
Make sure that you meet the minimal requirements. The game will most likely crash without an error message if your computer is below the requirements. You can find them, on the official CDP RED website:
http://en.cdprojektred.com/support/tw3-system-requirements/
Please note that desktop graphics of any kind are currently unsupported.

 

[CuldeCanard]

I posted this in another thread, thought it might be relevant:

Hey,


I tried posting a troubleshooting thread earlier in the week, but it would not allow me to start new threads... anyway...


I've come to a few highly probable conclusions; either your graphics card's fan is affected and not throttling to compensate for the heat overload, or you have a hardware mouse that's causing conflicts. These are the only things I can conclude. At first, I had no crashes, updated to Nvidia Witcher drivers and had massive crashes. Concluded these drivers were crap and enabled hardware mouse. As soon as I removed the new drivers and enabled hardware mouse, crashes were every 10 minutes (hard reboot requiered, sometimes it seemed my PC wouldn't come back from the dead), whereas before, I had no crashes with it disable with older drivers (760).


I then noticed more crashes afterwards, this was after playing, at times, an hour or more, with no crashes. Then I created a fan profile in EVGA precision, no overclock, with the max speed boosted at 60C. Did not hear the fan at all previously but haven't had any crashes since disabling the mouse hardware and enabling a custom fan speed profile. I also have max performance selected for Witcher 3 in nvidia control panel.


Hope it helps man, this seems to alleviate some of my problems. Core i7, 2600k no overclock, 8 gigs ram, onboard sound, Samsung SSD.

edit: also try disabling your mouse software, if you have a gaming mouse. Sensei software may be an issue as well.

 

[masc3d]

same here I suppose..
Bluescreen/freeze crash with GTX 780 TI after 0.5-2 minutes, no matter which settings

 

[Damun]

I have tried everything, from underclocking to rolling back drivers to closing all external software, the freezes still continue to happen, it's not a throttling issue, the boost clock will go into full effect. (1006mhz to 1058, sometimes higher) and the temp is only ever 77c at the most. It's not a thermal issue, it's not a stability issue. It's a problem with the game's coding. It's impossible for me to really point out the cause cause it happens anywhere, anytime, randomly.

 

[masc3d]

maybe it's not even gpu related. which mainboard do you have?

 

[Damun]

It's an MSI z77 board. I highly doubt its the hardware, considering that I have other games that run perfectly fine on my system that still manage to stress the GPU and whatnot out.

 

[masc3d]

yes, I doubt it, too.
just had the shortest test run, ever. crashed after 3 seconds of "gameplay", gpu temp: 33° ^^

 

[gediv2]

I cured my incessant freezing. I updated my bios. i deleted all entries in task scheduler. i disabled all non essentual processes in msconfigs startup tab. i turned off Steam overlay. i had the exact type of crash described in this thread and its gone. what a relief.

 

[m_88]

Same problem as Damun... although Ctrl+Alt+Del works for me.
I also have the feeling the 1.03 patch only made things worse.

Win 7 home premium 64 bit CPU
Intel core i7 2600K
GPU - Geforce GTX 780ti
RAM - 8gb

 

[Damun]

Well I'm hearing that the 700 series gpus have the issues the worst. Not heard a thing about the 600 series.

 

[0ulooked]

Well I'm hearing that the 700 series gpus have the issues the worst. Not heard a thing about the 600 series.

I have a 680, same problem. Every 1- 100 minutes I crash to desktop, sound keeps playing and have to ctrl-alt-delete. If CDPR doesn't fix this issue, i'm upgrading to amd r9 295x2 soon anyways. Heard the game is running smoothly on amd cards.

 

[Giroleti]

Nops. Having the same problems here with a HD 7870. Can't even pass the first cutscenes. Game freezes, the sounds keeps going for a while, and I have to kill the process.