For whatever reason, my game has begun COMPLETELY crashing my computer whenever I load into a game. Originally ,it was only during comp games, but I can now reproduce in training mode.
The issue began about 3 days ago, and only happened once intermittently. I was able to immediately load in after and was fine. I played many games since then with no issue.
I originally assumed the issue was heat, so I cleaned out my machine and began playing again while monitoring temps. I never saw anything exceed 60C max. I assumed the problem was solved.
Today, I played a couple of games, and while queuing, my system completely crashed the moment I loaded into a game after a number of games with no issues.
Whatever this bug allows me to completely wait through an entire queue and crashes on the character select screen. This has costed me two entire games and I’m now down 100 SR with two infractions on the account.
It’s worth noting that there’s no sluggish/bad behavior leading up to the crash. It is instantaneous.
So far, what I know is that:
This only happens in Overwatch and no other game/application
If it crashes, it’s always at the character loaidng screen–just a few seconds in (just long enough for the map/players in the background to render, I’d guess)
Loading other intensive games/stress testers doesn’t cause any crashes
Temperatures are not abnormally high when the shutoff occurs
Reducing quality settings doesn’t help
Verifying game files doesn’t help
Reinstalling doesn’t help
Deleting the game Cache doesn’t help
Disabling f.lux doesn’t help
My general specs are:
Intel Core i9 9900K
Nvidia GTX 1080
ASRock Z390 Taichi
32 GB (4x 8 GB) DDR4 Viper V416G300C6K RAM
Samsung EVO 970 1 TB NVMe SSD
Nothing is overclocked and runs at stock settings.
The Overwatch client doesn’t have system-level permissions to cause a shutdown, only Windows itself can do that. Generally, this can be caused by a corrupted driver or hardware issue.
What are you using to monitor temperatures? A lot of apps will only display averages, not temperature spikes. HWMonitor is a good choice if you want to see your max temps for hardware.
Another place you can look for clues is in the Windows Event Manager under Windows > System Logs. You will see critical events in the list around the time of the shutdown, which may point out the issue.
I think that’s splitting hairs. Perhaps Overwatch itself is not literally sending the command, but however its engaging within its container or with System level APIs is causing a shutdown under a reproducible set of circumstances.
Core Temp (looked at Open Hardware Monitor as well)
Event Viewer shows a consistent Kernel-Power (Event Id 41) (Task Category 63). No obvious events precede this and its vague at best: The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
You knew what I meant. Since I’m a volunteer here on the forum I was trying to offer some suggestions because I have no idea what each player’s technical level is when I respond to them :). However, Blizzard staff do not offer support for computer shutdowns. They will offer suggestions the same as I did above, but that’s generally the extent they will go. More info here:
It does seem like you have the technical knowledge to find the reasoning behind this. I would start with the memory dumps, because it’s probably two apps fighting for control of the GPU (I’ve seen this before) and when it doesn’t respond in time, Windows shuts down. Could also be permission-related depending on your security software.
It could be two processes fighting, though I have no consistency of when it fails. (It consistently ONLY fails whenever I first load into a game. Menus are fine, and if I do get into a game, it never crashes during).
I checked all the known locations for dump files. Both the files and System Events suggest nothing but an abrupt power off. So whatever is occurring doesn’t appear to be giving sufficient time to even generate a logfile.
That would suggest to me it’s power, but I’ve consistently run scenarios where I’ll run Guild Wars 2, Overwatch, and a Stress tester that pushes maximum CPU and GPU usage and it’ll run fine. So I’m feeling rather stumped here.
I’m having the same issue, and opened a ticket about it. Basically blizzard is going to tell you to see a tech. They can’t help because [at least in my case] there are no bug reports being sent to them when the game crashes. It might be worthwhile opening a ticket because they said my case was the only one on record. If you figure it out, please pm or post your solution.
Correct, even in the dump files there’s nothing. I think WhoCrashed? is the third part y one you’re thinking of.
I’ll check those out. But in my own teams, I’ve been managing to max usage on both CPU and GPU and push CPU temps to 90c with no crashing.
I’ve been doing some deep dives and I have a plausible theory at this point. Right now, I think there was some update to Overwatch, its dependencies, or Windows itself in how it handles resource management. I think what’s going on is that the system–when Overwatch loads up, briefly spikes the perceived usage and attempts to make use of Turbo Boost. It must be attempting to overcompensate and was causing crashes.
I’ve disabled Turbo Boost in BIOS and haven’t had any crashes since. Doesn’t mean it can’t spring up again, but so far so good.
Thank you for providing thorough details here, Gamemaster1k! I’m glad to hear that you’ve found disabling the Turbo Boost in the BIOS seems to have helped so far.
While system shutdowns or bluescreens are not officially supported by Blizzard, we have seen some reports and as you mentioned, I personally suspect that a windows update may be causing some issues with how our games are interacting with the kernel or drivers. Appreciate the information here! Let us know if anything new comes up or new findings
I will say that this frustration is particularly upsetting since it penalized me so incredibly hard for an issue that was out of my control. Unlike crashing mid-game, where you can rejoin and compensate for a much more minor penalty, crashes that happen just as assets load at the start of the game cause an immediate cancel and it doesn’t matter how fast you’re able to reboot and come back in–the penalty is in effect no matter what.
