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.