Game randomly freezing

[JackyD31]

Game randomly freezing

Hello fellow Witchers.

For those of you experiencing freezes on NVidia Cards go into the NVidia Control Panel and under Manage 3D settings got to "Program Settings" and select "The Witcher 3" profile. Set the power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance", the preferred NVida setting is Adaptive but apparently either the game or the cards can't cope with that settings and the screen locks up, specifically so in menus.

I did this on my end and it solved all crashes I was experiencing.

Look at the attached screenshot, this is where you need to change the setting, NOT IN GLOBAL SETTINGS!
View attachment 14467

Edit 1: Hi guys just chiming in to update y'all and post a correction:

I was actually wrong and the performance option in the driver was not the fix at the least not for me. What did it for me and which I can consistently reproduce is NOT running the game through GOG Galaxy.

If I launch the game via it's executable from the game directory no freeze ups, If I do so via GOG Galaxy the game freezes up sometime between the 3 -20 mins mark when entering any of the menus.

The reason why I thought the performance option was the fix was that I changed that setting as I usually don't want my OC'd card to throttle in games but in the same breath I also launched the game via it's executable and not the GOG Galaxy launcher. When I posted this I never figured that the GOG client could have such an impact on the game, boy was I wrong.

When I got around to firing the game up again yesterday night I did so via GOG Galaxy and the game froze yet again while reading a book, this happened no more than a cpl min into the game. Upon restarting I launched the game through it's executable and no freeze ups for more than 6 hrs.

I can consistently reproduce the GOG issue, game freezes anywhere from 3 to 20 mins into the game.

Apologies for the wrong analysis and the confusing it might have brought to some of you.

Edit 2: I've received reports from ppl that the first option does help too, so I unbarred it again, best advice I can give for now is to try both and see if the combination of the two solutions fixes it for those of you for whom applying either the first or second fix by themselves didn't work.

 

[May17th]

Someone said put it in Window Borderless and that would solve it but it did not.

How long have you tried this?

Sucks to get freeze just by reading a book in the inventory.

 

[Bayseek]

Seems like this works for some people. For me, I didn't. Still getting thrown to the Desktop randomly after a few minutes, while sound still plays.

 

[May17th]

Have anyone tried to return to the old GTA drivers?

 

[JackyD31]

Someone said put it in Window Borderless and that would solve it but it did not.

How long have you tried this?

Sucks to get freeze just by reading a book in the inventory.

I've been going for close to 3h w/o a crash

---------- Updated at 09:59 AM ----------

Seems like this works for some people. For me, I didn't. Still getting thrown to the Desktop randomly after a few minutes, while sound still plays.

My issue was different, I didn't CTD my game froze and aside from signing out I couldn't do squat, wouldn't let me switch focus to another window nor the desktop in general.

As for your issue, have you tried Alt-Tabbing back into the game? I'm being thrown to the desktop since like forever in games in Win 8.1 and most of the time the game icon won't show up on the Task Bar, yet if I do Alt-Tab the game in question usually is still running and I can get back into it, same happens for me in W3 though it only happen 2 or 3 times during the last 3h, so not as frequent as yours.

 

[Schitzo]

That doesn`t worked for me. I`ve also tried a rollback to the GTA V treiber, playing with the ingame graphic settings (no hair etc.) but so far nothing really helped, game freezes randomly after 5 to 20 minutes played

 

[Silvari]

doesnt work.. freeze in inventory after 5m.

 

[JackyD31]

That doesn`t worked for me. I`ve also tried a rollback to the GTA V treiber, playing with the ingame graphic settings (no hair etc.) but so far nothing really helped, game freezes randomly after 5 to 20 minutes played

Did you set it on the global driver preferences or on the Witcher 3 profile? You need to do it on the latter as the Witcher 3 profile overrides global settings to NVidia preferred which is Adaptive.

I'll update the OP to clarify.

---------- Updated at 10:19 AM ----------

doesnt work.. freeze in inventory after 5m.

look at my above reply

 

[May17th]

I changed to Prefer Maximum Performance, but too early to say if it helped.
But at least so far, there been no freezes yet.

 

[Schitzo]

Yes, i changed the setting on the witcher 3 profile. Nothing helped so far...

 

[JackyD31]

Yes, i changed the setting on the witcher 3 profile. Nothing helped so far...

What GPU are you on, Kepler or Maxwell? I read Kepler was having some more troubles in W3 and maybe this fix only works on Maxwell (9xx and up)
Additionally I am playing in full screen mode, no borderless windowed, maybe that has an impact too?

 

[n1c0las]

del

 

[XOF]

My game also freezes randomly.. Nothing worked so far ):

 

[Rom1944]

I have the same problem but i don't have a nvidia card i have an amd radeon hd 7900 series how do i change the power settings as i cannot find it in the catalyst control center.

 

[HaydenZammit]

Guys, try the 344.11 driver from Nvidia. I'm having success with that. Only had one crash in a convo. No crashes doing anything else.

Okay, it just crashed when I was about to swing my sword from horseback.

 

[May17th]

Okay, setting Maximum Performance and Window Borderless did not work.

Still freezes by just browsing the menu or whatever.

 

[kattala]

Hello fellow Witchers.

For those of you experiencing freezes on NVidia Cards go into the NVidia Control Panel and under Manage 3D settings got to "Program Settings" and select "The Witcher 3" profile. Set the power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance", the preferred NVida setting is Adaptive but apparently either the game or the cards can't cope with that settings and the screen locks up, specifically so in menus.

I did this on my end and it solved all crashes I was experiencing.

Look at the attached screenshot, this is where you need to change the setting, NOT IN GLOBAL SETTINGS!

Glad it worked for you but this is not solved. Please change the thread title. Changing the nVidia CP power settings for the game does not fix this. Still crashes to black screen in cutscenes. Haven't managed to get through the first scene yet. GTX780. Windows 7, latest drivers etc.

 

[Schitzo]

What GPU are you on, Kepler or Maxwell? I read Kepler was having some more troubles in W3 and maybe this fix only works on Maxwell (9xx and up)
Additionally I am playing in full screen mode, no borderless windowed, maybe that has an impact too?

I don`t know if it is a Kepler or Maxwell. I have a geforce gtx 560 ti.. yes, a old but good card. Running GTA V without any problems.
I`m indeed a little bit pissed right now. The bug was first reported at least 6 hours ago and no statement from some official until now.
I only need a clear answer at which point this is fixed and i`m able to played as intended.

 

[Guest 3816827]

This seems to work for me, too. I've been playing for 90 minutes without freeze/crash now. GTX960 with 352.86 driver, Core i5 2500k.

Thanks for the info!

 

[Millian]

I played for several hours, going into inventory many times, until it froze in inventory a short while ago. Don't expect a few hours of play time to be indicative of this issue being solved.