It’s not fixed.
I did Intel’s emergency patch on my i9-14900KF and mine is still crashing.
The fix worked for FF14, but I’m still getting the same Access Error crash on wow.
Here is my 2 month update. I started getting the ACCESS_VIOLATION crash back in August. At first it was once every few days or so and usually when I’d open a vendor or pick up a random item and hover over it. Then it became more frequent especially apparent when I went in to LFR for Fyrakk. It literally froze me in the instance and I could not leave until the raid ended or I was kicked. This was a repeatable occurrence. each time I loaded in to that instance it would do the same.
This is when it started severely crashing after every time I’d load the game (as well as spilling over in to D4). I tried opening a ticket with Bliz and they sent the canned automated response of it’s not them and it’s you kind of thing. Fortunately for me my setup is a prebuild so I opened a support ticket with them. We went back and forth for about a week doing diagnostics which included doing an absolutely clean wipe of the system and installing windows off a boot drive with all up to date drivers. With only WoW installed it would still crash on loading in.
They then sent me a new diagnostic tool that copied all of the logs while it was occurring. The next day they said they would RMA my CPU. Which in my case was a i9 14900KF. They sent a technician out and swapped it and from that point forward I’ve not had a single crash in just over 2 months.
Now I know that some of you may not accept that this fixed the issue however in MY case it did. After a month of crashing and unplayability the CPU swap is what fixed MY case. Now am I completely sure this is everyone’s issue? No. However this is what fixed it for me.
As for closing statements, my system would boot, operate, and function perfectly without opening the game. If I didn’t play WoW it wouldn’t have been noticeable. There was no diminished speed, or any other signs of anything wrong with the CPU. My system was less than a year old and I did not do any overclocking to it prior to this situation occurring. I had also installed the Bios Micro code update that all vendors were issuing prior to the whole RMA. From what my prebuilt vendor had told me the issue had already occurred and there was no fixing it.
Hope this helps someone.
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Sounds very similar to my issue.
I’ll try a few more things and if I have no luck, I’ll contact my computer manufacturer.
Thanks for sharing.
Well, to add another thing into the mix I reset my Windows again, but I went back to the previous version and got rid of 24h2. I have read multiple posts about that version of Windows causing crashing issues, and although none of them specifically mention WoW, I was at my wits end. It’s only been a few hours, but no access violations ( Which I think is the GPU drivers ) and no loading bar stuck.
EDIT : Over 24 now and no crashes or lockups. This is the longest I have gone in weeks without either.
Why would I adjust my CPU settings when all my TESTING passes with flying colors (benchmarks, cpu stress testing apps, memory stress testing apps, other games, the list goes on). That’s the thing you keep IGNORING in everyone of my posts. Only one single app of the dozens I have tested with fails. I can do stress tests for 24+ hours, zero issues. Yet somehow, this isn’t WoW’s fault when it’s the ONLY app I have crashing. I’m sorry, but anyone in my position, would see what the issue is, and it’s clearly NOT my CPU.
Without spamming this post with a million and one reasons/examples, I’ll sum it up in a very short statement: Not all tests are equal.
The 13/14th gen Intel CPUs have microcode issues with voltage regulation that slowly degrades the physical integrity of the CPU over time. Even if undervolted, the microcode bug will still eventually cause issues with voltage regulation; leading to damage.
As time goes on, the stability will get worse and worse and it’s not reversible since it’s actual physical damage to the circuitry at the nanoscopic level. Google the topic and you’ll see official Intel statements on the matter, along with a bunch of youtube clickbait spreading conflicting information.
Intel will tell you to update your BIOS(usually updates the CPU microcode as well) and while doing so, the motherboard manufacturer will likely have a very specific set of instructions/settings/profiles that you have to use to stabilize the issue. Like for my ASUS motherboard, I think I can only use the Intel profile preset and adjusting any settings pertaining to CPU related things can cause problems and negate the fix.
I haven’t checked in a while, but a while back, Intel said they were working on making a tool to test for the damage. Not sure if they ever completed it, but I’ll look around.
Would depend totally on if the settings themselves are damaging the cpu, even if you’re not seeing these crashes only in wow itself.
You would definitely want to follow the manufacturers recommendations for both the cpu as well as the motherboard.
Reply was to wrong poster initially.
I’m aware of all this, been following this issue since at least February (I have a pair of PC’s with i9-14900kf’s in them). I have applied all the BIOS updates and instructions from my motherboard manufacturer as well.
And you’re right, not every test is equal, that’s why I have run multiple tests, stress tests (CPU, Memory, GPU) as well as a multitude of other applications (benchmark tests (CPU/Memory/GPU), games, etc.) and I will keep screaming this from the rooftop. I have never had a single error from any other app. So even if it is a CPU issue, it’s something that only WoW is doing (which seems odd, given the age of it’s engine), as I can’t reproduce it with any other app no matter how hard I push my machines. And shockingly, WoW ran fine all throughout Dragonflight. So either WoW is doing something funky, or this is the most whacky coincidence on the planet.
I’ll also look for this tool from Intel, as I would like to know. Intel is being a real PITA about swapping the CPUs (and I’m honestly not convinced they’ve truly fixed the issue), so just trying to figure out how to make this issue go away.
Well you can keep doing that, but the culprit is still likely the same: The CPU. Games are pretty dynamic in nature and WoW has to do a lot of on the fly shader compilation, along with a lot of IO requests to load assets. About the closest you might come to somewhat simulating the chaos of open world MMO game workloads(FF14 isn’t really open world, you’re just in a bunch of isolated “rooms”) might be Geekbench where it throws a bunch of random types of tasks at the CPU. Problem is, most of them are simple tasks and most of them don’t involve having to handle IO requests between devices, along with a ton of other tasks that games like WoW will throw at the CPU.
A good example of tests not all being created equally: Prime95(the GUI version)->Torture test->All cores+hyperthreading->Small FFTs(not smallest) will tax your CPU’s thermals more than any other common benchmark can possibly push it. Why? Because the specific test creates a perfect storm that hammers everything to the max and leaves no breathing room. You’ll see wattages you’ve never seen on your CPU before. Try it some time(assuming you have adequate cooling and that your BIOS is set to shutoff the PC in the event of hitting 100C or w/e to prevent damage), run Cinebench or something on your CPU for 20 minutes, check the temps, then run prime95 the way I outlined and check your temps. They will be wildly higher and will likely hit thermal throttling almost instantly on a xx900. I doubt even a triple fanned AIO will keep up with it. AVX operations roast CPUs and shader compilation typically uses them. This means you’ll end up with a lot of random transient power draw spikes that happen on very small time scales that won’t register on HW monitors. If the CPU already has damage, it might be enough to trip things up.
On a similar side tangent: Normally, RAM is pretty reliable right? Well what about the exploits years back where people figured out that your could hammer attack memory addresses to cause a neighboring bit to flip from a zero to a one? In a situation like that, you could have thrown every common torture test at the RAM and never had an issue, but yet that one specific method could reliably flip a bit. So again, not all tests are equal. Sometimes, it takes the right conditions to create the perfect storm to trigger the 13/14th gen issue.
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I’ve run Prime95, I’ve run Cinebench, I’ve run OCCT, I’ve run a bunch of other tools. Basically everything I could find trying to find another application that causes an issue. And as I keep saying, they all seem to have zero issues. But WoW, nope, no bueno.
I’ve stress tested my CPU, my memory, even my GPU, and I’ve still not encountered an issue. Even Prime95 with the settings above don’t trigger the issue (and my CPU max’s out at about 75C, custom water cooler doing it’s job).
It’s for these reasons that I am finding it hard to believe that the only app that I can find (out of 20+) that triggers any kind of issue is WoW. Something else would trigger if it was truly a CPU issue.
Still looking for a tool that can identify if my CPU’s have an issue or not.
Just started getting this myself the past few weeks, but I’m on an i7-6700k and RTX6800, I thought maybe my system is finally dying, but others are having the same issue, so maybe not. I obv dont have a 13/14th intel though. I havent had a chance to do any troubleshooting, probably start with a memtest.
My buddy was having the same problem, got it solved by resetting the UI.
Im having the same problem, but only in the event areas, it happened a few times, like 5 or 6, its quite random for me, my setup is:
Ryzen 5 5600
Rx 6900xt
32 Gb 3000mhz
Same! the maintaince on the 15th, the is not the processor i have either
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After today’s maintenance (11\26\2024) my game won’t start due to the access violation error. Everything was fine last night when I when I was doing M+. Went to bed and woke up to check my vault and I can’t get the game to open.
I don’t have a higher end CPU, i9-11900k, so I don’t think I fall under the fix…
EDIT: I removed the WTF folder and the interface folder and it booted. I poked around for a bit and then logged off and tried to log back in and its back to access violations. /Sigh…
I had a similar (if not identical) issue. All the usual scan & repair, uninstall, etc. I think I resolved this by installing on a different drive (I have 3 internal drives C: D: & E:) perhaps a different folder (“Wow Work Around”) would work as well. I did a folder compare and believe the culprit is files in the DATA folder. Definitely a Blizzard issue. I’ve been able to launch without error 4 times in a row (a new record since the 19th).
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