This has been a persistent problem now for a few days. Constant crashing and random exiting of the game. It happens in combat, during missions (primarily main story missions), while in combat, even during character creation and graveyard tutorial. I have tried changing DirectX versions with no solution, altering graphic settings and turning down the graphics, disabling settings. Nothing is working. I did read Nvidia driver updates can cause issues and there’s been a couple updates lately.
If this started happening after an update to the graphic drivers, you could always try to roll back the drivers to an earlier version.
Mine has been fine since the 9/28/20 update. Before that was crash city. We did some MBs today, and two people crashed every single time we left. They eventually left the group.
I have this problem with an Nvidia GeForce 9800GT…
The driver is pretty old (but up to date) and the game crashes/freezes everytime and randomly. Sometimes I can play 1 hour, sometimes just 2 minutes.
Every crash requires to reboot because it also freezes Windows 10. No error message, no popup, nothing. I just have to push on the power button and reboot.
I play from Steam. This problem is not recent, I didn’t count months. I tried many solutions from forums but nothing works… here is the list :
- Set all visual options to minimals
- Run game with admin rights
- Remove some user config files or directories (from steam or the game himself)
- Change the priority of the process under task manager
- Reinstall the game
- Repair the game from the game launcher
- Launch the game with DX9
- Launch the game in windowed mode
- Change the max bandwith
- Overclock/Underclock the graphic card
It is just a joke, maybe next step is to repair my motherboard by myself ?! Where is the end ?! This problem just appears with this game. I have no problem with my pc, everything works except this, it’s a fact. I saw many topics on the web and I don’t understand there is no response from Funcom about it. I am patron, I really like this game but this bug just makes me crazy.
So… Funcom can release updates and updates and new contents again and again, it is just useless if it’s not possible to play, sorry !
PS : On another PC, nVidia GeForce GTX 670, SSD Samsung 960 Pro, Core I7 4790K, 12Go RAM, Windows 10 64-bit… the bug still appears… less but still appears… Maybe I need to run it on a Nasa PC ? Just a joke !
You didn’t list that you tried compatibility mode - I would recommend that 
Doesn’t remove the problem entirely, but I crash much less often with that enabled.
Frequent crashes to the desktop with no error message are a common problem caused by later versions of the NVidia drivers. 425.30 is the last known “good” version, anything after that is hit or miss.
However those crashes don’t normally cause Windows to freeze. That happening suggests that there is a more serious problem on your end.
Edit: Hang on, 9800? That thing doesn’t even get driver updates anymore and should probably be retired.
Thanks for responses ! ^^
Sorry, I forgot 2 things in the list (for the moment) :
- Turn off antivirus/firewall
- Use compatibility modes (XP, 8, …)
Yep, 9800… I know, it’s a museum piece. But it still works ! My GTX 670 has the same issue so I don’t know what to think… and many others players with more recent card have the problem too (and not only with Nvidia).
Come back to an old version of drivers is very strange. How can it be possible to ignore Nvidia updates ?!
I have no problem with others games/programs so I think there is another explanation…
You shouldn’t ignore the later drivers, but I can take a bit of experimentation to find a version that works for your particular configuration. And again, nvidia-related crashes to desktop should not cause Windows to freeze. There’s likely something else going on that’s not directly related to the drivers or even SWL itself.
Regarding the 9800, that really makes me wonder how old the rest of that system is. For me, Windows freezing while gaming was a sign of my old video card dying a couple of years ago. Hardware failures aren’t always immediately catastrophic.
Be sure you are in Windows (Borderless) too. If you’re in fullscreen, it might cause your windows to freeze when you crash.
Unfortunately, I tried borderless too. 
The system with the 9800 is an AMD FX-4100 quad-core, 8Go RAM DDR3, SSD, Windows 10 64-bit v20H2… Bios version from 2012… End of the world !! Lol No shame, I take care of my stuff.
I understand but I still believe that there is a bug with SWL… others games like Guild Wars 2 works fine, no signs of failure and a big coincidence with my other pc… and with many other people.
Had that happen to me the other night with random crashes. Thought it was because I was inside a mission instance causing it. Just updated to the latest Nvidia drivers tonight and hoping that it doesn’t happen again.
Just started trying to play again after not playing for months, and the same thing is happening to me. I’ve tried updating my graphics drivers, repairing the game from the game launcher, restarting my computer, etc. Lots of the things listed in the above list. I know it worked months ago, and I haven’t made any major changes myself, so I don’t know what’s up.
The crash point is completely unique as well. Sometimes it crashes while loading the launcher. Sometimes while loading the main menu. Sometimes while loading Agartha (where I currently am) and sometimes it crashes a minute or two after I reach Agartha. I have yet to be able to play for more than a minute.
I have also experienced the complete computer crash when the game crashes that Drakarm mentioned. It only happened on one of my crashes but it happened exactly as described. Complete computer freeze, no error message, no popup, nothing. The computer just completely stopped responding to any input, and had to be powered off.
Thinking back on things there is a small chance that I updated my graphics drivers sometime in-between when I last played in March, and now for some other game. I suppose I’ll look into that and look into how to use older graphics drivers for a particular program and see if that solves the problem. It’s not something I’ve ever needed to do before.
On a bios from 2012 I guess a complete lockup could be overheating? I’d be slightly optimistic about actually fixing that because I’ve never had it happen, so it’s not a permanent feature of the game like the regular crashes. Those will likely always be with you, no matter how much voodoo nonsense you buy into about never updating your video drivers and always making sure your machine is facing due north on a new moon lol
Your 9800 PC configuration might overheat your system by playing the game. It would be a good idea to make sure the air flow/cooling is optimal, and clean out fans and ribs.
That being said, using an old graphics card / system should have no impact on the game experience except for FPS / loading times. I run a 10 year old Nvidia machine myself, and have maybe 1 or 2 crashes a year.
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