The Call Of Duty Warzone battle royale offshoot is here, but unfortunately, player counts for PC remain lower than expected due to frequent crashes to desktop.
The crashing issue seems to mostly hit players following the Warzone 1.17 patch. After searching through reports of the issue, we’ve isolated several possible fixes to get you back into the fray as quickly as possible.
Warzone Crashing To Desktop Troubleshooting
First and foremost, make sure your gaming rig actually meets the Warzone requirements! Some older systems aren’t quite up to the task of running this 150 player battle royale experience. Here’s what you need to ensure a stable Call Of Duty Warzone match:
- Operating System: Windows 7 64-Bit (SP1) or Windows 10 64-Bit
- Processor: Intel Core i3-4340 or AMD FX-6300
- Memory: 8GB RAM
- Space: 175GB
- Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1650 or Radeon HD 7950
- DirectX: Requires DirectX 12 compatible system
Scan For Corrupt Files
If you meet all those minimum requirements but keep having crashes, the next step is to follow the standard troubleshooting measure of checking for corrupted files.
Activision titles like the Call Of Duty franchise are now handled on PC via Blizzard’s Battle.net launcher. In Battle.net, click the Call Of Duty: MW icon and select Options, then Scan and Repair. Select the Begin Scan option and wait for the automatic process to complete.
If that doesn’t prevent crashing during a match, its time to look for other potential problems with background programs, driver issues, or even a Battle.net bug.
Background Programs
A number of users are reporting conflicts with background programs that may cause stutters, lag, and even Call Of Duty Warzone crashes.
The main culprits right now are hardware monitoring tools for high-end gaming PCs, like MSI Afterburner or the HP Omen Command Center.
Even normally stable third party CPU heat monitoring tools have been causing issues. Before trying anything more drastic, turn any of those kinds of apps off and then restart Warzone and try again.
Driver Issues
As should be expected, the major graphics card developers released new game-ready drivers for the launch of Warzone.
If you have any issues on PC, your next course of action should be to update your drivers. If you don’t have the update tool for your graphics card pinned to the taskbar, it’s easy to find the latest driver installation file here:
Battle.net Conflicts
A few players have managed to resolve the crashing to desktop fix by shutting down any Blizzard-related processes, deleting some files, and then running an update.
Note that this is a bit of a drastic measure, and there will be a long re-download time. If all else fails, here’s what you need to do:
- Open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del
- Click More Details and navigate to the Processes tab
- Shut down anything related to Blizzard, as well as the agent.exe program, by clicking the app and then choosing End Process
- Open the Start menu and type Run into the Search box
- In the Run app’s command line, type %ProgramData% and press Enter to open a new folder
- Right-click and delete the Blizzard Entertainment folder
- Open Battle.net and scan files and folders to re-install the needed data just like you did in the troubleshooting above
- Wait for Warzone to launch after the update
Those are all the working fixes we’ve found so far. Have you discovered any other workarounds, or are you still having issues with the Call Of Duty Warzone PC crash bug? Sound off in the comments below!
Not sure how to jump into the Warzone? We show you exactly how to download the Call Of Duty battle royale game here. Warzone is free-to-play and doesn’t require the base Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare to install — although you may require a monthly subscription to play based on your platform (check out our guide here to know if you can jump in now).
Related Content
- CoD Warzone: How to Fix Memory Error 13-71
- How to Use a Controller in Warzone on PC
- CoD Warzone‘s Best Landing Spots
- CoD Warzone: How to Fix Error 263234
- How to Dominate Plunder in Warzone
- CoD Warzone‘s Best Guns and Loadouts
When you can finally install the game and play without crashing, take a gander at some of our other guides on the game. Keep your eyes on GameSkinny for more Call of Duty: Warzone guides
