Main Thread - Info Request - Error 132 since Windows 2021-01 update, discordhooks.dll

Last night (Jan 21) Windows installed the “2021-01 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 10 Version 20H2 for x64 Based Systems (KB4598291)” and then restarted. Since that update I am getting a critical error when I start the World of Warcraft client. “ERROR #132 (0x85100084) Fatal exception!”

If I click OK the client quits. Odd thing, though, if I drag the error window aside, I can log into any of my characters. Other than the error window everything appears to work. I have filed it as an error report (I did not take note of the ID.)

I have updated my nVidia drivers to version 461.09 (GeForce RTX 2070.)
I have tried rebooting a few times.
I have tried removing all mods/addons.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game.
WoW Classic works fine, it’s just Retail that won’t work correctly.

I have not yet tried removing the Windows update - that often breaks more than it fixes. However, had I noticed the word “Preview” in the title I might not have let it install.
I am running an Intel i7-5930 with 16GB RAM, RTX 2070, Realtek audio if that helps.

I am having exactly this same issue. Have not found a fix.

My setup is quite different, im using a Radeon rx 580 with an Intel core i5-8400.

Update: I have run the repair tool - did not help. I deleted the WTF/Cache/Interface folders - did not help. I reinstalled wow - did not help.

Update 2: deleted the windows update from 1/22 - works perfectly now. Thats not great

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Thank you for the fix. Same issue, uninstalling the update fixed it.

Same issue here, uninstalling the update.

Super glad to hear that worked! Though it’s hard to say if the problem is Windows or how other programs are acting on Windows post update. I found this in all 14 crash reports from the account:

(“DiscordHook64.dll”)

This is the hook the game is having trouble loading up which is causing the crash. Disabling the Overlay feature in the app’s settings menu should also work to resolve the issue. In some cases updating may work if this is a Discord bug they are working on fixing.

Just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to try the Windows Update again later and see if disabling the overlay or updating discord helps. Windows Updates can be important for security since that’s how Defender gets its stuff.

Cheers!

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Same thing here, and uninstalling a significant Windows update doesn’t sound like an answer. Blizzard, ideas on what we should do?

Missed the blue post, removing Discord has solved this temporarily for me.

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My wife and I are both having this issue on our separate PCs as well. We’re both on the Windows Insider program running Windows 10 build 19042.782 as of a day or two ago. That’s when we started getting Error 132. Closing Discord before starting the game eliminates this error.

Awesome, thanks for the tip! Closing Discord (not just closing the chat window but completely exiting Discord from the systray icon) indeed allows WoW to open normally. (Even tried starting WoW first, then opening Discord after, but the error message comes up.)

As of 1/23 4pm eastern, Discord does not show any updates.

Disabling the Overlay feature in the app’s settings menu should also work to resolve the issue.

Thanks, I tried disabling the Discord overlay and it was fixed immediately without needing to remove Windows updates!

Super glad to hear that disabling the Overlay in settings is working! Should allow folks to continue chatting with friends, playing games, and staying updated on Windows security possible all at the same time :smiley:

Cheers!

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I have the same issue and it was resolved with disabling Overlay in Discord.

While disabling Overlay solves the problem temporarily, this should not be considered resolved. We need a solution that continues supporting Overlay and Windows updates.

Thank you! I disabled overlay in Discord and WoW starts normally.

Hey everyone, looking for a bit of help trying to solve this issue.

My WoW Client has never outright crashed before until today. When launching WoW from the Battle.net Launcher, I come to the WoW Login Screen and then am immediately met with Error #132 (0x85100084) Fatal exception!

Edit: Additional Details:ProcessID: 7772, ThreadID: 7272, Exception: ACCESS_VIOLATION… The memory could not be “read.”

The error closes my game immediately afterwards. I did some digging online for solutions and have already done the following (with no success):

  1. Updated my Video Driver
  2. Ran WoW Repair
  3. Ran a System Scan + Repair
  4. Disabled/Deleted my Addons
  5. Reset my UI/Graphics Settings in WoW
  6. Many, many restarts.

Any help/tips would be appreciated… if more information is needed please let me know what I need to do. First time I’ve ever had an issue like this playing WoW, not sure how common it is.

Thanks!

Update: As an update to this, I have since uninstalled + reinstalled WoW and the error still persists when launching the game. Really not sure what other options I have.

The #132 error is a pretty generic error so we’ll need the diagnostic information contained in the Error report before we can suggest a fix.

You’ll find them in the Errors folder of your wow folder. Post the latest in full.

I’m currently dealing with this myself as it has just started this evening.

I have done everything you have done and also completely uninstalled Twitch, Overwolf, Curse Forge & Discord alongside temporarily uninstalling my security and firewall systems. Currently, my system is in the “reinstalling” phase of this process and it’s already been an hour and sitting around 30%. I’m going to check up on it and test it out again tomorrow, and see if you have had any further luck.

-Amp

I’m wondering, if I uninstalled and am reinstalling (which is the last item of troubleshooting), why am I showing 2 separate sets of files: CacheOld & Cache, WTFOld & WTF (for examples). Is this going to cause me problems? Do I need to delete these old files?

So everytime I try and play wow i get an error #132 I have spent days on trying to fix this going as far as completely uninstalling every game I have. I am now sitting with 3 2tb hard drives that are completely wiped and a Boot SSD with a fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro x64. working with a friend over discord, we have been trying to recreate the error as i can play any other game even classic wow without the problem. so finally we decided that it must be a discord issues so we broke out Teamspeak and uninstalled discord just to be safe game launched no errors. So installed discord but didn’t start it everything is completely fine. let the game run for a good 30mins Start discord and bam no longer able to play wow error #132 pops up.
So I close the game close discord thinking that maybe its something in the background that is causing the issue, nope only teamspeak and graphic’s program running. So we ran a ton of testing ran sims even tried to see if there was an error in the code from the latest windows patch. No everything seems to be running fine. Start discord again bam the #132 error pops up. So i say okay lets try turning everything back no overlays nothing only open mic and try that. Even though i ought to be able to have overlays enabled if i have them turned off for wow this seems to be the ONLY fix is to completely turn off overlays everytime i want to play wow anymore.

So just one question. Looking at everything you posted I didn’t see one where you checked to see if all your drivers were up to date.
Seeing as how that is the usual one of the reasons for error #132 I was wondering why.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/8288#:~:text=Common%20Problems&text=message.,to%20resolve%20any%20compatibility%20issues.

Sounds like an issue in Discord’s overlay hooks.

These get injected via a standard windows API call and can cause World of Warcraft to crash.

We can confirm this if you post your error report in full. You should be able to find the latest in the Errors folder of your wow folder.