The only fix that has worked for me. Make sure the peeps at blizzard see this. ^^ Thanks mate GLHF out there.
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Worked for me thankssssss
I am having this same error and am unable to run the game at all.
I first set WindowMode = “1” and then deleted the settings folder and both of those didn’t work.
Edit: I rebooted and it works now. I think it had something to do with using VLC player.
Ok this is the weirdest thing. And here is how i fixed my issue.
So i am on Windows 7, and i had this issue. So i read all the post i could find dating over a year back, but nothing helped. But when i read this last guy here say it might have something to do with VLC, i closed that and tried again, but that didn’t help. But i did notice that Opera suddenly had like 20 processes going, it usually does not. So i closed Opera, and now the game works…
I don’t know why, but this is was what i had to do make the game run.
… aaaaaand the problem is back.
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+1 to still crashing after trying WindowMode and deleting the Settings folder.
It happened to me again. And this time i had to close Spotify to make it work. This is really weird.
Restarting my computer after a recent driver update seemed to solve the issue.
My hero
Worked! I got so worried for a moment there! ![:slight_smile:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=5" ":slight_smile:")
For me It was completelly different, for some reason the nvidia container freezed, I discovered that while trying to open the nvidia control panel, so I stopped the proccess and let it restart, when I opened the game again it worked just fine
Hey all,
We’ve seen a ton of these fixed with simply restarting the PC. The latest Nvidia driver update requires a PC restart and it isn’t prompting all users to do so. If you’ve got this, step one should be a simple PC reset. If that doesn’t help you out, check out W00tma5ter’s fix or our troubleshooting here and here.
P.S. - keep in mind that a PC restart and a spontaneous reboot don’t do the same things. If you find that your PC is crashing, you may need to log in and safely reboot before proceeding.
As far as I can tell this doesn’t appear to be related to a driver or OS change but a problem with how Overwatch handles itself on launch.
TL;DR: If you recently switched to a monitor of another resolution, try setting the “WindowedWidth” value in the settings file to the new horizontal value of your monitor then saving the file and launching the game.
I started having this issue about 6 days ago and when I searched the error code online I found SEVERAL posts about it over a time span of years. Obviously, even if it WAS related to drivers/OS it’s specific to Overwatch (yes, I know it’s because of the error code but an issue where a game fails to start in this manner tends not to exist in other games).
To clarify, I haven’t had any updates to Windows or drivers. I use Enterprise Windows 10 with updates disabled in the services.msc and gpedit.msc settings. Yes, I do update my PC, but only WHEN I SAY SO and I pick and choose which updates I want using wushowhide.diagcab. NO, I don’t allow Nvidia GeForce Experience to update my drivers either (and if you couldn’t tell from the prior text, I don’t use any “driver update software” either).
I reboot my PC 6 days ago and it worked again. I’ll try to run the game every 2-3 days to play it and I notice that I get the error again until rebooting.
I searched for the problem again just now but instead searched “overwatch general error until reboot” and saw this thread from… 6 days ago. How interesting is that?
The combination of the fact it’s been happening for years to several users and it just happened again to someone else the same time it happened to me suggested that this is an issue where blame can be put on Blizzard.
However, it seems that it may be related to HARDWARE CHANGES too.
When I went to the settings file I noticed that “WindowedWidth” was set to “2560”.
This is how my file looked:
WindowedHeight = "1041"
WindowedPosX = "-334"
WindowedPosY = "0"
WindowedWidth = "2560"
WindowMode = "0"
I recently switched out my 1440p monitor temporarily to test a 1080p monitor. Upon launching the game the FIRST time after swapping monitors the game ran fine but was on the wrong screen so I switched it back over to the monitor I’m testing out and everything worked fine.
I’ve noticed when in the game that if I put it in windowed mode to take a screenshot of settings with ShareX, or whatever other reason I would temporarily put the game into windowed mode that it would have black bars and be too large (resulting in it being displayed across 2 screens). Knowing that there was probably a configuration file somewhere I could modify I brushed it off as a non-issue anyways.
But now I believe that this is the reason why the game fails to launch. I think it might be using some form of windowed mode, or checking it or something on launch and since it’s an improper resolution it results in an error. The best reasoning I could come up with is the game launches in whatever “WindowedWidth” and “WindowedHeight” is in this file using windowed mode then attempts to fullscreen IN THAT RESOLUTION, then switch to the correct one. That, or something similar to this is taking place…
So all of this is basically to explain how I came to the following idea: I switched the value of “WindowedWidth” to “1920” (replacing the old value of “2560”) and the problem has been resolved. I never set “WindowMode” to “1” or deleted the settings file.
I say this is Blizzard’s fault because I see no reason why the windowed resolution should affect the way the game launches if the game is set to use fullscreen. It’s the “fault”, more or less, of the user for changing their monitor since it changes the work environment but I’m not sure it’s fair to blame a user for a monitor change.
We are aware of issues with Nvidia driver 397.31 entering a bad state, this can occur every time you restart the computer. If you have this driver and the troubleshooting above hasn’t helped. Make sure to install the Hotfix Here.
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If any of the provided solutions gave no help, here’s what fixed mines:
Win+R, type “msconfig” and proceed. Uncheck “Load Startup Items”
go to “Services” tab at the top.
Check “Hide all Microsoft Services”
Click Disable All
Apply & Restart.
There is one or multiple programs preventing your GPU from working correctly with Overwatch. (In my case, it was the NVIDIA services, ironically) Good luck!
There is a new Nvidia driver out now. 397.64
Installing this fixed all my issues with Overwatch.
I’ve never had this trouble until this week. Now I have it quite often. I change my resolution almost every day on my pc for work related reasons but did not have this issue till this week. I have had repeated new drivers from nvidia this week but my gut says part of the issue is with the game battletech interacting with the drivers in a bad way which is part of why I suspect nvidia has updated drivers like 3 or 4 times this week.
Same problem here. One other problem is freezing but not fully just for seconds i ve think this is cpu usage problem but no it isn’t and i didn’t found solution yet. Fix the game!
Hey folks,
Most of these recent errors were caused by a bug with a recent nvidia driver. Nvidia has already fixed it. If updating your drivers does not fix the problem, you’ll need to start your own thread as the situation in this thread was already resolved.
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