Common Technical Issues and Solutions

Greetings all,

We’ve been working to improve some of the available troubleshooting resources for our games. We wanted to have a go-to resource for some of the most common technical issues you can experience in Blizzard games. Each of the following posts goes over a different type of technical problem and links to troubleshooting resources. If you continue to have problems after using our technical support articles, check the last expandable menu in this post for how to receive more help.

Before Troubleshooting the problem, we suggest checking our Known Issues sticky thread. We try to keep this as up to date as possible with known conflicts, so you may save yourself some time with this!

To proceed with troubleshooting, check these links:

If none of this helps, review this post for “what to do if you need more help” to post your own thread and get your issue resolved as quickly as possible!

For FAQs on technical issues, Click the Triangle!

You can browse our Known Technical Support Issues sticky for other common contact causes.

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Why am I only having problems with Blizzard games?

There is always the possibility that there is a server issue, but we try to post about these problems on the Breaking News bar on our site, the Blizzard Battle.net Application, and in game. We also update our BlizzardCS Twitter as soon as we can when we see server issues. If you suspect this is the problem, check those locations first before trying troubleshooting.

If you’re having connection problems with only certain games and services, everything you connect to has a different IP address. It’s very likely that you take a different path through the internet to connect to our servers. Comparing even two different games or services isn’t very useful because of this. When we suspect this type of problem, we’ll ask for connection tests so we can try to find out where the problem is.

Why do I receive a leaver penalty when I have a technical problem, or when the servers go down?

Any time you leave a match for any reason, you affect up to 4 other people’s chance at winning. There are also potentials for abuse of the matchmaking system like queue dodging or unfairly preventing loss of rating. For these reasons, we tend to be a bit harsh on this.

Regarding server issues, these do happen sometimes, and we understand that they are frustrating. However, they are also rare. The system allows you to regain rank no matter your number of losses, so these problems should not have large effects on your rating. If you do regularly have what seem to be server problems, you’re more likely looking at a connection issue and should troubleshoot it.

Please note that Customer Support does not restore lost skill rating or remove penalties when something like this happens. If you are having technical issues, please troubleshoot them to avoid penalties in the future and improve your game experience.

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I have a high-speed connection and my speed test looks fine, so why is my latency so high?

Connection speed tests measure bandwidth, which is different from latency.

  • Bandwidth is how much data can possibly be downloaded and uploaded every second.
  • Latency is how quickly you receive information from a specific location.

Latency can be different even between different games of the same company. More information on why this is can be found here. When you have high latency to a specific service, you still could possibly receive as much data as advertised, but there’s something delaying the flow of that information. When we investigate high latency, we run tests to find out why you are getting your information slowly from our specific servers.

Why do you suggest that I update or remove software when they were working with the game previously?

Other programs can have conflicting interactions with our applications, windows, or your drivers.

Updates to our applications, security programs, or other third party programs can cause the programs to fight with each other. A security program may suddenly mistake our games as a threat. Other programs may fight us for certain drivers or windows functions, which can negatively impact your gameplay.

Our goal is to help you play the game. If you do find a program causing a conflict, try updating or reinstalling that program. If it doesn’t fix the problem, contact the program’s support team. They can usually help you configure the program, or contact their developers who can fix the incompatibility.

Why can I stream or download from other sites without issues but have problems in Blizzard games?

Streaming services have the ability to buffer information. This means that they give your computer data before you see it, often 30 seconds or even minutes before you need to look at it. Online games on a 'live server’ need to send and receive data immediately so that you can react to it immediately.

A direct download can be interrupted by a connection issue, then pick back up when your connection returns to normal. Our games will try to do this, but if you disconnect for too long, you will be fully dropped from the servers.

Keep in mind that anything that takes up bandwidth can cause game connection issues or make them worse. We suggest playing with as few other applications running as possible for the best experience.

Why do I need to swap to Ethernet when my WiFi works for other things?

WiFi is less stable than a wired connection directly to your router or modem. Many things interfere with WiFi, like physical barriers (walls, glass, etc), other types of waves (microwaves, etc), damage to the hardware (USB Ports or wifi antenna), or computer power issues. The easiest way to see if your WiFi devices are the problem is connecting directly to your modem or router via Ethernet. Note that we do not directly support wireless connections. If you find that WiFi is the problem, you can contact the support team for the WiFi device or the wireless router.

Why is my entire internet crashing when I disconnect from Blizzard games?

When your internet goes down, regardless of the trigger, it means that your network drivers or network hardware crashed. If you have this sort of problem, focus on things like:

*Note: We do not support play on mobile internet connections. However if this works, it indicates the issue is likely with the modem, router, or ISP.

What is Rendering Device Lost and why do I only see it in Overwatch?

Note - If you are currently receiving this error with a RTX series Nvidia graphics card, there is a known investigation into this issue. See our Known Issues sticky for details.

“Rendering Device Lost” is an Overwatch error message for a TDR (timeout detection and recovery) incident. Timeout Detection and Recovery is a Windows-level crash which happens when your graphics card becomes extremely unstable. To prevent your PC from crashing, windows will crash your graphics drivers. You can read more about TDR incidents here.

There are a number of different possible causes for a Timeout Detection and Recovery event. Unstable overclocking, corrupt graphics drivers, program conflicts, overheating components, or even hardware issues could cause this kind of problem.

Although only a small percentage of players will encounter this error, it can be frustrating because the root cause is often difficult to diagnose. For help troubleshooting this error, see our Rendering Device Lost article.

Why isn’t Voice Chat working with my Bluetooth Device?

After some testing and reading up on bluetooth technology, this seems to be an issue with how bluetooth functions. You’ll also see these issues on other games that employ voice chat functionality. Bluetooth is designed for telephone audio, not high fidelity gaming audio. As a result, it is prone to issues in gaming audio when you need stereo audio and microphone access. There are work arounds for this, which I post later, but they result in a sacrifice in audio quality.

Bluetooth as a technology has three modes relevant to us:

  1. Headset Audio - Uses both stereo audio and microphone. However, the sound quality is very low. (8kHz/8bits.) Using this mode will probably make everything sound like you’re going through a tunnel.
  2. Hands Free - Gives you a mono audio signal and access to your mic. This has lower audio quality as well (16kHz/8bits.) Good for telephone/VOIP communication, bad for hearing where your enemies are since all sound will come from both headset cups.
  3. Advanced Audio Distribution Profile - Close to CD-quality stereo audio, good for hearing where your opponents are in overwatch, but disables mic and as a result voice chat.

Because of these limitations, it is highly recommended that you avoid using bluetooth headsets if you are attempting to use voice chat simultaneously. If you’re only using it to listen to the game audio, it should be fine to activate the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP, Stereo audio) profile for better audio quality.

Workaround Below

If you want to use both stereo audio and mic, enabling your bluetooth device’s “ Headset ” profile can give you the best compromise. Unfortunately as mentioned above, the audio quality is poor and on some devices may result in the headset not broadcasting any game audio at all.

I hope this provides some more information on why this is happening. Thanks for all the information provided in this thread thus far, as it helped us identify the common threads and get some test devices which we used to figure this out. I’m going to sticky this thread so we can share our findings with other players.

What to do if you Need More Help

Technical issues can be very frustrating to try to diagnose on your own. Fortunately we have both a helpful community and support staff who can help locate the problem with you. If you prefer to troubleshoot with the community/blue posters and see if anybody else is having similar issues, start a thread with this information:

For all technical issues:

  1. Create a text copy of your DxDiag using these instructions. Once you have that made, open the file. You’ll need to copy and paste the contents of the Text document into the post, and put four Tilde (~) marks above the DXDiag. It’ll look like this:
DXDiag goes here
  1. A list of any troubleshooting you’ve performed already.
  2. A description of what you’re doing when the problems happen, any error messages received, and what it ‘looks like’ to you when it happens.

Connection, Installation, or Voice Chat problems include this as well:

  • Some WinMTR tests to the Overwatch server you’re playing on. If you can’t log into the game, you can use the generic overwatch login server IP for your region. Otherwise, run these tests while the problem is actively happening. If you catch a disconnection or latency issue with the test, it will make it easier for us to find the problem.

Voice Chat Issues Only:

  • Overwatch stores voice chat problems in an error log file. To create the log, go into the game until you experience a voice chat issue and finish that game. Once the game is over, log out immediately and gather your voice chat log.

:warning: Note that not all threads may receive a reply from support staff. :warning:

We try our best to get to as many threads as possible, but as we are working on all of our forums, some may not receive a Blue post. If you need immediate one on one help from a Game Master, you can submit a ticket, live chat, or callback request. When submitting the ticket, make sure to include all of the above information as well as a copy of an MSInfo file for the quickest help. Please do not attach full MSInfo files to your forum posts.

4 Likes
Game keeps crashing
Disconnecting from Server (LC-202)
My sound doesn't work
High Ping Issue
My overwatch is not okay
Overwatch not opening
Overwatch crashing because "The application encountered an unexpected error fix"
Audio cuts in and out every few seconds
Massive FPS Drops For No Reason
Game Crashing - PC
Connecting to wrong server
Disconnected twice
Game Keeps crashing
Overwatch crashes after a few min ingame
Random crashes mid-game, with Report ID
Game keeps losing rendering device and crashing
Gameplay has become unplayable due to lag
Certain map areas break my hardware
Recent Frame Rate Drops Overwatch
Strange Lag- Need help interpreting LookingGlass Results
Weird visual glitch and crashing
Ow lost connection to game server
Overwatch Latency issue
Rending Device Lost RTX 2070
[PC] Black screen / rendering device has been lost
Higher ping than usual
Overwatch Audio stutter
Battlenet launcher doesn't open the game anymore
Sudden resurgence of Your Rendering Device has been lost errors (Attempted to include DxDiag and MsInfo files)
Your game is complete trash
Mic cuts me off / Mic dosen't capture my voice
Overwatch won't start
Low FPS, ~12 FPS
Having constant IND spikes
No output options for sound
High Latency Recently
Please help. Game is incredibly sluggish
Black screen on launch then crash
Really Low FPS despite good laptop
Connection Issues in Only Overwatch
Disconnected from Server
Lag spike in NA
PC: Stuttering when players change heroes
Getting good numbers but game still feels choppy
Good system, Extremely low frames
Constant stutters
Your rendering device has been lost
Bluetooth headphones go out in the middle of a fight, but returns once the game ends...?
Unusual High ping and packet loss experienced
Request timed out
OW randomly keeps disconnecting me
Blizz fix NA servers
Unusually High Latency
Low MS stable connection, sudden disconnects
Increasing Number of Disconnects
Audio Cutting in and out
Cannot fix random disconnects. Here is my looking glass
My specs are high but the game still runs very crappy
Massive lag spikes on 2 separate games - North American server
My game crashed the moment i joined a comp game
Why am I suddenly getting micro stutter?
Latency issues today
Cant run anything but a web broswer with overwatch client and not crash
90% packet loss to 137.221.83.86 (Looking Glass Tool)
Keep disconnecting after several games
Constant disconnecting during competitive!
Game keeps crashing - BLZOWCLI00000006
Server disconnection mid-match
Loosing connection
Wrong output for comms
Only Getting High Ping In Overwatch
Unplayable FPS on/after startup
Constant network quality notifications
Frequently disconnecting for the last month
Glitchy Input or Network Issues?
Frame drops since latest winter wonderland patch
Regularly loosing connection to game server
Game will not launch
My voice chat bug
Higher than average ping
'Lost Connection to Game Server'
New ping issues in the last few days
My Last Hope For Appeal
Rendering Device Lost
Keep Losing Server Connection Despite Internet Never Going Down
My overwatch latency is spiking and i cant create ticket
Overwatch Suspension Problems
Heavy Frame Rate Drop
Random Lag Ingame please help!
Random lag ingame
Verizon Fios Dropped/Slow Connection
Verizon Fios Dropped/Slow Connection
A cry for help (fps)
Overwatch Disconnecting from game server
Overwatch is unplayable
I cant play crashes when i start up
Low FPS after redownloading
Overwatch Crash on Launch
Please Help: IND super high
Game lagging hard
High latency and packet loss since reaper event update
Game randomly crashing
Random disconnects from blizzard servers
Recent ping spikes during matches
Game suddenly viciously laggy, almost trying to load
Rubberbanding Issues
Sound turns off randomly then fps drops
Overwatch Stutters / Freezes
Ping issue so 3 games are fine but on 4th it like 200ms and
Overwatch On Razerblade 15 Crashing
Game hides itself when I try to screenshot or records?
Game crashing once a week
Ping issue so 3 games are fine but on 4th it like 200ms and
Kicked from comp games due to server disconnecting
Game crashing after about 20 minutes on PC
Audio cutting in and out every 5 seconds and black screens
Latency Issues (200+ ping)
Overwatch crashes after two minutes no matter what
Newly got the game, Crash
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Ping spikes even on Ethernet cable
Experiencing FPS drops for almost half a year
IND spikes problem
ORD1 - Ping Spikes
Keep disconnecting
Overwatch running very bad on my PC
Ping has suddenly been much higher than usual?
90MS Latency in both US East and West Coast games
Rubber banding and other lag issues
Tried everything I can to fix my ping problems, signaled by the constant flashing of the orange lightning bolt in the upper left corner. but to no avail
Black loading screen, then closes game
Blackscreen and then a crash
Lost Connection to Game Servers (Overwatch)
Game keeps kicking my off the server (Since Pachimari event)
Overwatch crashing again during comp
Overwatch become transparent when I'm in a game
Game keeps Crashing upon startup
Game Server/Client Issue
Brand new PC - Terrible Unplayable FPS Stutter
Bad Ping in Overwatch (ONLY OVERWATCH)
Disconnecting from Overwatch
IND problem new
Lost connection, -50sr...again and again and again
Delete this thread
How to get better FPS/performance
I am getting annoying stutters
[Main Thread] EU Servers - high latency
Latency Problem
Overwatch game chrasing after 2/3 minutes ingame
Game Disconnects Once a Day & Immediately reconnects
Connection issues
Pretty bad lag spikes lately
Lag Spikes issues
Game crashing on launch
Overwatch keeps disconnecting
See latency spike(s) on looking glass, now what?
Ping spikes while playing
Ping Consistently Spiking Every Minute
FPS drops when launching game
Bugs since patch Oct 12, got worse in patch Oct 26
Overwatch constant black screen
Registry / Game issues
Internet Issue (Spike IND and Latency)
Overwatch Still Crashing On Launch
Game update stuck at 99%
Feb 22, 2022 Patch: No Surround Sound, Dull Sound Cues Issue
Constant disconnects while in game
Game Crashing at Optimized Levels
Bad ping and IND all of a sudden
Random Overwatch Crashes not just me but also the teammates
Random Overwatch Crashes not just me but also the teammates
Disconnecting + Have Traceroute Info
Frame rate issue
"Rendering device lost" error persists after troubleshooting
"Rendering device lost" error persists after troubleshooting
Kenobiwan Failed to Join Server
Game started freezing for several seconds during fights
Higher ping than usual?
Overwatch black screen crash on launch
Game keeps crashing after a couple games
Got kicked out of the game
Cannot connect ogame server
Comepttiive queuing suspended, because system error
Help me , im so tired of this
Disconnection issues
Overwatch won't actually launch PC
Error Report On launching the game
2 Weeks of Unplayable Lag
Huge delay on keyboard imputs?
[dida] High ping Canada BC
Nightly High Latency
Severe FPS issues
Hmm…I’m stumped…
Lag/Rubberbanding
Please help reading Blizzard looking glass
Keep losing connection to server
Rendering device lost overwatch 2
Getting massive ping spikes since ~Dec 20
Forever stuck in "entering game"
Game freezing on startup
What's wrong with the servers lately?
Packet loss and Connection Icons constantly
Being kicked from servers
Disconnects every day
Overwatch 2 Unplayable Stuttering and FPS Issues
Long Launch time
OW2 Freezing and Crashing my computer the past few weeks
Latency issues for 4 weeks now
[Main Thread] FPS Stutters After Update - May 2023
[Main Thread] AUS players on High Latency Servers - May 2023
March 7th isses
Game unplayable in full screen
Massive fps drop
Failed to connect again. Suspended (video)
Ping Issues in Game
Single Digit Frames After Alt + Tab
Overwatch crashing for no reason, but i still get punished
Overwatch crashing for no reason, but i still get punished
Overwatch stutters a lot and constant FPS drops when initially started up. Issue usually clears up after 20 mins or so
Fix renderdevice lost error
IMD and Latency increasing out of nowhere
PC voice chat not working
Randomly disconnect
~100ms ping kicks me out of games
Game buggin so bad
Super slow loading times with Overwatch
Big lag spikes over the past few days
Much higher ping than usual lately (Overwatch only)
Massive overwatch 2 fps drops
Match cancelled after rejoin
Overwatch Keeps Disconnecting Mid Game
Game Crashing Immediately
Terrible FPS on overwatch
(SA servers) ow1 unplayable lag after ow2 beta started
Overwatch Closes as soon as I load it
Frame Drops when booting OW up
Bad fps performance
Overwatch getting disconnect
Overwatch drastic FPS drops
Game doesn't launch
Unplayable Lag [UK]
Massive ping, constant disconnects
No game audio when in vc
Please help crashing
Overwatch Crashes At Lanuch and Displays An Error
High Ping - NAE, Ontario to ORD1
Low Graphics with ultra settings
350+ ping for unknown reasons (Americas)
Overwatch Not starting with the 004 error message
Stuttering in game
Game Server Connection Failed...Retrying (East Coast)
Constant disconnecting during competitive!
PC crashes at victory/defeat screen
Insanely bad FPS
Blizzard fix your servers
Rendering Device Failed
Overwatch "blizzard error" on launch
Screen flashing sideways
My latency is on 250 and i normally am on 10 to 30
DCing/losing control of character
Competitive Connectivity Issues
DC'd then my latency raised
Consistent unstable ping
"Lost connection to game server" every other game
Lag despite same latency?
Can I stop random disconnects?
Im still having lag spikes
Unplayable fps through the game
Crash After 4 minutes
Irritating lag spikes
Ow black screens when I open it
Latency from 150-2000ms!
Getting DCed out of Matches in Comp
Overwatch stopped working overnight
High ping for no reason (NA East)
Rendering Device Lost
High ping across all regions since a few days
Crash overwatch last update
Cannot Que Into Game (Get Kicked For Inactivity) And Invisible Characters/No Sound
Unstable Ping on fast internet speed
Crashing very often
Please help me with my disconnections
Stuttering when entering game
I keep getting disconnected from the server
Lost connect to server due to server issues, cant get unsuspended or get my sr back