Access Violation

Very suddenly started getting this error, was fine an hour ago and now it occurs immediately when I try to open WoW. I have an AMD processor, so it is not related to some of the intel processor issues that are stickied.

As far as I can tell, all my drivers are up to date. I’ve updated / reset my addons. Ran the WoW repair. I’ve tinkered with some other system / security settings that some videos recommended, which did not resolve. The specific error language notes:

The instruction at “0x00007ff60fa9cd92” referenced memory at “0x0000017cb598fa8c”. The memory could not be “written”.

I’ve seen some other posts about resetting the Render Scale or options with ‘Advanced Work Submit’ and ‘Optional GPU Features’, but I’m honestly not sure where to access those options.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

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Ensure nothing is controlling permissions on the WoW directory except Windows (like backup utilities or security software).

Check your free space on your drives, should be 15% or more.

Prevent any overlays from running while playing WoW (peripheral software, Discord, ShadowPlay, etc.).

I have been dealing with this since last week. it appears to be some kind of incompatibility with Nvidias new drivers that they have updated twice withing the last week and the DUSTY OLD OUT OF DATE DirectX libriaries Blizzard is using in the games directory.

Took me hours to track this down, because the generic answer I constantly hear is “Well you have a 14900KS, it migth be degrading” I assure you its not. It’s just wow.

Anyways. Digging through logs and 35 crash reports worth of data, it appears to be Blizzard is using outdated d3d12.dll, and d3d12core.dll. I didn’t bother with the other two since they are for windows 7 compatibility.

What sent me down the rabbit-hole is every error log pointed to the same set of dynamicaly loadable lbraries. d3d12.dll, and d3d12core.dll

Blockquote
Exception.Summary:
ACCESS_VIOLATION - The instruction at “0x00007ffaa1241582” referenced memory at “0x0000000000f21a78”.
The memory could not be “read”.
(DBG-OPTIONS DBG-ADDR<00007ffaadfd0c03>(“D3D12Core.dll”) ← DBG-ADDR<00007ff7184874a3>(“Wow.exe”) ← DBG-ADDR<00007ff71847ef37>(“Wow.exe”) DBG-OPTIONS<>)
<:Exception.Summary>

Did a whole lot of digging because i ran into this issue before using specifc games where the problem was outdated or corrupted. DirecrX libraries.

Double checked, saw Blizzard had very ancient DirectX libraries of the wrong size, replaced with proper recent versions… POOF problem solved, so far.

Kept happening after intense combat in M+ keys. Only an hour in i’ll update after a few more runs to see if the problem comes back up.

Blockquote
Update note: This is after 35 solid ingame M+ crashes. All starting on SPECIFICALLY 03/07/2025. What ever changed that day or night is the problem. I have had ZERo crashes like this previous.

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Checking in after a 3 hour raid, and 4 Mythic plus runs… Problem gone.

The DirectX binaries WoW.exe is referencing in the games folder were completely out of date. Nvidias new driver was referencing probably somehting that isn’t there in those versions of what Blizzard has provided for my niche set of hardware.

Not a single crash.

How did you fix this?

Swapped out the Out dated/invalid d3d12.dll, and d3d12CORE.dll for proper up to date, validated, and singed ones from microsoft.

You can get them if you download the DirectX redistrbutable from MS, or if you are snazzy directly via DirectX Github using mucrosofts version of wGet called NuGet.

I posted this here as help, but ideally this should be handled by the Blizz Dev staff pushing this out via thier launcher as a minir quick update.

Nvidias latest drivers broke something in older versions of these redistributable DLL’s. The wow client is making requests that arent there or in a different form with Nvidias drivers as of the past two weeks.

Ideally the mods whould pass this up for further investigation, or maybe a green text person could bring it to a blue text person.

Playign with DLL’s is not an every day thing and getting “un-vetted” ones could cause problems. If you are going to venture down this path make sure they are digitally signed and thier checksum is valid.

Solution worked rock solid. No more game client crashign in the middle of a M+8 or somehting.

The files can be found in (Game Dive) Blizzard\WOW\Retail right along side wow.exe, they will be d3d12.dll, and d3d12CORE.dll. I didn’t bother with the others two as I don’t use them in my system.

4 Likes

I’ve been struggling with the same issue, and your solution, unfortunately, did not work for me. I tried replacing the DirectX 12 DLL with the latest one available from Microsoft, and while the game would run, I got a crash shortly after with the same D3D12Core.dll error.

Then the launcher went ahead and replaced my d3d12.dll file with the old version.

I’m going to try and run the game with DirectX 11 next and see if that helps with stability.

I experienced this same issue upon restart of the Launcher. It went right on ahead and put the old version back.

Now I did ultimately find that rolling back the Nvidia drivers to 572.60 fixed it all.

I did do a complete offline safemode uninstall with DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) (Please download the legit one from the original source, it is Free, if you are going to use it)

  • Go to Nvidias website and manually download 572.60
  • Download DDU (Official site: wagnardsoft dot com)
  • install DDU
  • Diconnect your internet cable or wifi
  • Reboot your PC holding SHIFT while you click restart (Safe mode, just plainsafe mode)
  • Once you are booted up into Safemode Run DDU let it purge NVidia.
  • Reboot (DO NOT Connect the internet)
  • Install Nvidias official driver 572.60, do a “Clean Install” under Custom install.
  • Now plug your internet back in open up the Nvidia app and disable automatic updates.

Seems to have worked for me and no longer crashing. Atleast I can feel more confident that im not going to burn someones key while farming for GildedUndermine crests, because lets face it, crashign or disconnecting in the middle of M+ runs seems like incompetence and malicious if you know you are prone to crashign or diconnecting.

I wish Blizzard to the time to build some safety mechanisms into M+ for things like this. Like Freezing the entire instance while a member gets back online would be fine. Just blanket pause everything with a notification to the team trying to tackle the dungeon. Maybe even give player latency and ping as a metric in the premade group finder. I would even say put “Disconnects” as a metric there. I mean would you invite soimeone to a high key if they ahve has 12 M+ diconnects in the past 24 hours? I dont think most would.

Feels extra terrible for healers as we get blamed for everything, even if its not being said.

2 Likes

Thanks for the detailed instructions - I am familiar with DDU, and I started suspecting Nvidia drivers earlier as well, but the timeline for that did not quite line up for me. I installed new NVidia drivers on 3/6, and the crashes started on 3/15. Went through my backups to confirm the dates too.

I think I am at a point where I’m ready to try anything to see if this works, and a clean install of an older Nvidia driver is high on the list now.

Other things I have tried:

  • Using DirectX 11
  • Upgrading local d3d12.dll locally
  • Underclocking CPU and disabling XMP
  • Changing graphics settings in game

Fingers crossed!

I started Crashing on 3/7/25 which lines up for me since they released New Drivers on 3/5/25, I would have installed them after that raid night…

Release dates:

Version:572.83 Release Date: Tue Mar 18, 2025

Version:572.70 Release Date: Wed Mar 05, 2025

Version:572.60 Release Date: Thu Feb 27, 2025

So I used DDU and installed version 572.60. My only crash before that date was back in November of 2024. Everything is fine so far, back to a 100% rock solid game.

There are also several “Hotfixes” they released between the 5th and the 18th that they don’t count as “Driver updates”.

Also replacing the d3d12.dll would only work temporalirly, the next time you launch the launcher, it will replace it again with Blizzards older version. Saw the launcher do it right before my eyes LOL.

IM TYPING IN CAPS SO SOMEONE SEES THIS.

Please pass this along everyone, as a community this has to get fixed.

  1. Download Intel Extreme Tuning
  2. Drop your P core down (I went from 57 to 45)
  3. This will basically throttle you down. I went from 5.7 GHz to 4.5 GHz to show you from my previous example.

I went through 3 RTX 4090 gpu, 3 Sets of Ram, 2 Mobo, and 1 CPU. Still had issues. BRAND NEW UPDATED COMPUTER…. still had issues.

It was so bad I didn’t even play during S1 TWW :frowning:

Anyways, found that fix when I started debugging crash logs. Just under clock hour pc, and it stopped producing the error.

Mine specifically I think is related to new intel chips, and some weird buggy code in the wow framework.

For the record, both PC ran every other game/stress test like a champ. Only wow had this issue.

Cheers all, and please spread the word about this fix. Wow is a community as much as it is a game.

I think your issue or the issue you had is completely unrelated to what is being dicussed in this thread. You may jsut have faulty hardware. Knocking a CPU down from 5.7 to 4.5 would be non-starter territory and would constitute an RMA to the manufactuer. That is just money thrown into a fire pit at that point.

The issue in this thread is specific to recent events. I have been running a 14900KS at intels Extrme profile just fine zero issues for months. (Altough I don;t use intel safe Load-lines, since they don;t take my motherboards rather “Beefy” VRM’s into account, and overshoot with transient reponses)

This Recent behavior has a specific date (around 3/7/2025) which lines up with Nvidias driver updates to handle the fiasco that has been the RTX 50XX series. In the process breaking somehting in the 30XX series. Specifically somehting in the version of DirectX12 blizzard uses to run the game.

Revert to drivers before that date, problem gone.

(Caps doesn’t get any more attention than plain text.)

I’d rather see people simply revert to drivers that function than to mess around with Intel Extreme Tunning Utility and realy mess thier hardware up.

If you were having isues during TWW season one, you should check you motherboards manufactuer as they have all applied a microcode patch to bring the CPU’s votage requests under control, and you also get new Intel defaults that put you in Intels recomended specs.

This includes non-K processors in the 13th and 14th gen. If you do have a K-series processor you get even more new options to “Intel Defaults”(Performance for air cooling and Extreme for water cooling). All motherboard manufactiers have also ceased overclocking CPU’s by default out of the box. (This is what mainly lead to the problems you are probably describing in your specific situation) (Especially if it was an Asus motherboard which turned on “Asus Multi-core Enchancement” by default (Now that option is default “OFF”) Some other manufacttuers had a version fo this, but none were as egregious as Asus. End-users who simply built a PC and loaded defaults had no fault in this, and most were unaware this was on.

I hope you don’t find this as “Dismissive”, I jsut tend to steer people away from options that could cause more issues. Intel Extreme Tuning Utility falls in that real as first time users of the software tend to decend into the rabit-hole of mucking around with things they don’t understand. IEU can easily instruct a processir to “self destruct” with a few simple clicks.

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Downgraded my nvidia drivers last night to 572.60 using DDU, played today for about an hour, and I just got the dreaded access violation error. Back to the drawing board.

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The game crashed over 10 times during raid night tonight. I downgraded drivers to 566.36 afterward and got another crash within 10 minutes of logging in.

Going to continue investigating.

To those swapping DLLs, I highly advise against it since it probably triggers Warden’s heuristics and potentially get your account banned. Exploiting DLLs are how a lot of hacks work.

The likely reason why it appears to have made a difference probably boils down to the changed DLLs having caused a mismatch in the shader cache hashes, so the drivers recompiled the shaders and fixed the broken shader.

The correct way to test this would be to ensure the driver shader caches are wiped. For Nvidia, it’s located in:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\
or
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\NVIDIA\
(you can press start+R, paste one of those in and press enter, to directly take you to the folder. it will be one or the other of those folders, but should be the first one these days since it’s been quite some time since they moved the cache location)

The folder named DXCache needs to be deleted. Don’t worry if it says some of the files are still in use, usually by Windows itself, just skip the ones it can’t delete and then relaunch the game. Obviously, ensure that WoW isn’t actively running and verify that it isn’t with the task manager.

idk, if directx was the culprit wouldn’t half the customers or more be in crashing for no reason? why is it just us?

all i know is that wow never crashed before undermine patch, not once.
if it was a “ram” problem my wouldn’t my pc be crashing? blue screens?
for example i was in mid boss fight on one arm bandit and i got the same error as everyone else in this thread. luckily my pc is fast enough i was able to log back 45 seconds later, but there goes my dps parse
what doesn’t make sense is that blizzard is using d3d12.dll drivers that are 5 years old.

Yes, actually it does… The last major update to DX12 was DX12.2 and that happened in 2021. Even when updated to a newer version, they are almost always backwards compatible with previous versions. Also, assuming there weren’t any major breaking changes and if the game doesn’t use any of the potentially newer features, then it’s basically the same as running the previous version. But I’m not about to rant about libraries this early in the morning.

The point I was trying to make in my previous post was that the DLL swap is a placebo fix, but people on the forums don’t like hearing that heretical word, so I tried to sugar-coat it with the most probable technical explanation.

I think I have found the culprit in my case.

Discord updated its overlay to a more modern version. Ran wow without the overlay for 4 hours, no crashes. Enabled overlay and the game crashed after 10 minutes.

I’m using legacy version of the discord overlay now since a couple of hours ago and wow hasn’t crashed yet.

I also uninstalled and reinstalled wow before my test but I don’t think that had any effect.

Overlays are absolutely notorious for crashing games, right along side with things like browsers or other apps using hardware acceleration. This is why the troubleshooting guide specifically instructs you to close them:

Close all other applications to resolve software conflicts and free up resources.
Note: This includes any Overlay programs you may be running.

But I’m glad you (hopefully) solved your problem.

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I think I might have spoken too soon… still seeing the crashes although much less frequently. Going to continue investigating.