While playing QM HOTS, I consistently see the entire OS freeze up. The game will freeze and all other applications will become unresponsive. I can’t alt+tab, ctrl+alt+esc, or ctrl+alt+del. This used to happen me daily. I quit the game, reinstalled after a few months and was fine for a few days, now I have crashed multiple times per game. I have to hold the power button on my computer, turn it back on, and rejoin the game.
I’m on the latest version of Windows 10, with the latest drivers for my hardware. I’ve reinstalled HOTS and my graphics drivers several times. Scan and repair finds nothing. I’ve tried only playing after rebooting with no other applications running.
Sounds like unstable hardware. Try reverting any overclocks, including DCOP/XMP to stock. A work around might be to try capping the HotS frame rate lower so that the system works less hard.
Never clocked anything, actually. It’s everything with default settings.
I still find it odd because I’ve never had this issue with any other game, be it old or new.
Quite possibly. Between my personal experience with HotS being a rock solid game that as good as never crashes, to the symptoms of “the entire OS freeze up” as good as always being the result of something out of the control of an application. Modern operating systems such as Windows 10 or 11 are designed to prevent applications from freezing or crashing the OS. The only other explanation would be that somehow the OS itself has become damaged, or is running buggy drivers causing the behaviour. You could try reinstalling the OS as a last measure to rule this out.
Capping at 60 FPS should make both CPU and GPU work less hard, which usually will make them more stable between lower clock speeds and cooler temperatures. The reason one game may crash over another can be down to the sort of workload the game produces. HotS will heavily load single cores, likely reaching very high boost clock speeds, and despite its age the StarCraft II engine it uses was extremely optimised for its time and is notorious for exposing system instability due to how well it uses hardware. Another game like Elden Rings might push GPU very hard, but not tax CPU as much, using multiple threads that naturally run at lower frequencies.
So… I tried like you suggested capping the game at 60 FPS, but it still crashed again. I might try to limit how many cores the game can use as well, or something between the lines.
About Elden Ring I had no idea, I played it but it ran just fine on my device, too. Was causing my GPU to work at high regime indeed, but I just thought it was “normal”.
I’ll try to reinstall the OS as well, because otherwise I’m really out of ideas.