The application encountered an unexpected error

I have been having constant crashes the last month or so, mainly a generic crash stating “the application encountered an unexpected error” mingled with some graphics driver problems.

I have tried the following:

Uninstall and Fresh Install
Update Graphics Drivers
Disabling Antivirus/Closing Unnecessary Background Programs

My setup is:
Water Cooled Ryzen 3900X - Stock Clocks
GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme WATERFORCE - Stock clocks
32GB DDR4 3200 Corsair Ram
Sabrent PCIE Gen 4 NVME SSD

Temperatures don’t exceed 60c on either CPU or GPU, even under maximum synthetic loads.

I have no issues with any other game but Overwatch. Please help.

Anything happening in the Windows Event Viewer under system logs at the time of these errors popping up? Usually they’re marked with a Critical sign :exclamation:

Yes, there’s a ton:

Faulting application name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Faulting module name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000223f216
Faulting process id: 0x3970
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6059a8dfd3e44
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Report Id: 4ca68107-fcd0-42b0-94f0-8bdf894d7530
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:


Faulting application name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Faulting module name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000223f216
Faulting process id: 0x3970
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6059a8dfd3e44
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Report Id: 601114c1-e90e-43fd-97dd-536d6f3f5b9c
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:


Faulting application name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Faulting module name: Overwatch.exe, version: 1.46.1.1535, time stamp: 0x5e701291
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000223f0e0
Faulting process id: 0x3970
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6059a8dfd3e44
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Overwatch_retail_\Overwatch.exe
Report Id: d3ecbfda-4d94-41b4-8dfb-84eb1d71d185
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Looks like I got 18 of those during 4 minutes of a Quick Play until the game completely crashed,

Unfortunately, I can’t read windows error codes because I’m not a robot :slight_smile:
If the second tab of those errors don’t provide more information as to where the error is starting, and neither do the errors right before them, we might be able to spot it in a dxdiag.

Click here to show/hide DxDiag instructions
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  2. In the DxDiag window, click Save All Information.
  3. Name the file “dxdiag” and click Save.

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Here is the pastebin of my DxDiag. Thank you for your effrots!

sg4NLm8X

No readable errors coupled with the crashes. Do you have any other background apps/overlays that might be interfering with the game displaying?

You also have the option of opening a ticket with the staff for the error codes (they can sometimes provide insight on those).

If you’re feeling super savvy and don’t want to wait until Blizzard’s support staff is on the clock (it’s the middle of the night here), you can download a Windows memory dump reader and take a look at what’s happening in those (will definitely show the app crashes). But there’s no support for those types of apps here on the forum, so you’d have to figure out how to use it on your own.

Forgot to check that you’ve seen this post from the staff:

And also ask which hard drive your game is installed on?

Drive: G:
Free Space: 77.8 GB
Total Space: 7630.9 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: ST8000DM004-2CX188

This one needs some space freed up to run properly. You should keep approximately 12-15% of the drive dedicated to free space for paging files/fastest performance.

The only overlay would be GeForce FPS counter. I have used that ever since I started playing Overwatch during the beta (although, on a different rig with ajn Intel CPU and GTX1080)

I have a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master mobo with the most up to date bios (Bios F11 from 12/9/19)

Overwatch is currently installed on my Gen 4 PCIE NVME drive which has 428GB free of 930GB.

I have 7 other drives on my rig used for media.

If you disable that, does the problem persist? A background update may have changed how the overlay works on the game.

If yes, I would consider opening a ticket, and personally I’d dig into the memory dumps, but I’m impatient like that :slight_smile:

I will disable the FPS counter and see if that makes a difference. I don’t actually need it as my frames never drop below my monitors refresh rate.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about accessing and interpreting memory dumps.

If that does not fix the problem, I do I go about opening a ticket?

https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/product/overwatch/908/1433/solution

Microsoft has some info here, if you’re interested: