Recently, perhaps around the time the game was updated for the Reaper Dusk skin challenge, I have started experiencing a very strange problem. If I select Options from the main menu, the game freezes for about 10-11 seconds before bringing up the Options menu which at that point functions as normal. This does not happen when entering Social or Career Profile. The CPU usage at Main Menu is very low, maybe 2% or so, but during the time when I try to enter Options it doubles to 4% or 5%. If I try to task switch out, then the game window greys out and Task Manager/Windows says “Overwatch is not responding” but if I just wait the 10-11 seconds instead of ending the task, it comes back to life.
This issue is very inconvenient, since if I attempt to enter Options in game (for example, if I wish to change my mouse sensitivity or adjust a hero specific option), I can’t. Entering the Options menu when I’m in a game is likely to disconnect me from that game, and while the attempt is made to automatically reconnect me, it means I don’t want to risk playing Competitive mode at the moment.
The Scan and Repair option in the Battle.net launcher finds no errors, and I have check to ensure the Settings_v0.ini files in my Documents/Overwatch folder are not set to Read Only. I even (accidentally) reset all my options to Default, but this made no difference. All of my Windows/Nvidia drivers are up to date, and as far as I can tell my SSD which the game is installed to is not failing. This only began happening with a recent update. Is there anything else I might want to try? I can find no record of this happening for other users.
Here is what the logs record as happening whenever this temporary freeze occurs (note that the numbers by P2 and P3 are slightly different each time):
Windows Error Reporting:
+++ WER0 +++:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: AppHangTransient
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0
Problem signature:
P1: Overwatch.exe
P2: 1.71.1.31358
P3: 624f2538
P4: unknown
P5: unknown
P6: unknown
P7: unknown
P8:
P9:
P10:
It’s been a week and I’ve gotten no response on this, but I would like to summarize the additional troubleshooting steps I have taken over the last several days:
–run Scan and Repair on the installation. No errors found. No change.
–run full chkdsk /R on the installed game drive. No errors found. No change.
–run full chkdsk /R on the OS drive. No errors found. No change.
–uninstall game, reinstall on separate drive from where it was previously. No change.
Around this time, I realized that the majority of the Options I’m trying to access (mouse sensitivity, key binds) are not even stored on the local PC. They’re tied to your account and stored on the Blizzard server. With this in mind, I tried the following:
–turn off Windows Defender Firewall entirely. No change.
–bypass my router entirely and connect the PC directly to the modem. No change.
–having a different account log in to Battle.net and launch their Overwatch. No change.
–installing Overwatch on an entirely different non-gaming PC connected to the exact same router network and then launching with my own account credentials. THIS DID HAVE AN EFFECT. On the second, far less powerful PC, Options loaded after a 1-2 second delay. Not immediate like how all other menu choices load (Social, Career Profile, etc) but fast enough that Windows doesn’t mark Overwatch.exe as “Not Responding.”
So whatever is causing this is hardware specific. What is different about my gaming PC compared to the non-gaming PC? Both run Windows 10, both have GeForce driver 512.15, both have the same Windows Firewall settings. My gaming PC has an AMD CPU and a RTX series GPU, and the non-gaming PC has an Intel CPU and a GTX series GPU. Don’t see how that would affect a request to the server, or why the matchmaker etc. all sends/receives network data perfectly fine except for this Options menu thing.
