Fix: Overwatch Crashing

Overwatch is rising to be one of the most popular games ever launched by Blizzard after World of Warcraft. It is a team-based multiplayer game where are person plays as a first-person shooter. It is available on several different platforms and allows users to engage in a competitive battle online.

Being said that, there have been numerous reports regarding the game crashing when the user was playing a competitive match or the game refused to launch. This behavior was multiplied after the latest update hit Overwatch. There may be several reasons why you might be experiencing this error. It can range from problems in your hardware too bad software configurations. We will go through them one by one and see if we can solve this annoying problem.

Tip: You can enable Windowed mode to help you troubleshoot the issue. If you do not use Windowed mode, you will be locked out of Windows until the game is responsive again.

Solution 1: Uninstalling Razer Chroma SDK

The Razer Chroma SDK enables your computer to automatically download and install SDK files whenever a Razer Chrome peripheral is detected on your system. Through this, regular updates are also deployed which address bug fixes and the support for new products.

Despite its numerous benefits, Chroma SDK is known to clash with the game and cause it to either crash or prevent it from starting up. You can try uninstalling this software and see if this does the trick.

1. Press Windows + R, type “appwiz.cpl” in the dialogue box and press Enter.
2. Here all the applications installed on your computer will be listed. Navigate through the list until you find the software, right-click it and select “Uninstall”.

3. Restart your computer completely and try launching the game again.

Tip: If you have any kind of background processes running (such as CCleaner or Logitech), it is advised that you exit them completely. They are known to cause conflicts. This solution also indicates you to uninstall all Razer products such as Synapse, Cortex, etc.

Solution 2: Checking your GPU and disabling Overclocking

Let’s move to the hardware side before we continue with more extensive software troubleshooting. There are a few simple checks which must be ensured for any game. Your GPU’s airflow must not be constricted and the core temperate of your system should not exceed the safe limit. There were many reports which showed that the CPU or GPU’s core temperate rising was one of the reasons why the game crashed. Make sure all this is working correctly before you proceed.

Another thing for you to note is that if you have overclocking enabled, you should try disabling. Many users reported that overclocking caused their game to crash notably after installing the latest patch. Make sure that overclocking is disabled from your BIOS too before running the game again. Disabling overclocking of both CPU and GPU.

Solution 3: Uninstalling Microsoft Visual C++

Microsoft Visual C++ is a commercial, integrated development environment (IDE) for C, C++, and CLI programming languages. It has tools for running and debugging various C++ codes including the code for Microsoft Windows API, DirectX API, and Microsoft .NET Framework.

However, there were many reports submitted by the users which indicated that this was causing the crashes and uninstalling it solved the problem instantly. You can use a similar method as solution 1 and try uninstalling the software. You can always reinstall it if this doesn’t work for you.

Solution 4: Changing Display Resolution

If Overwatch fails to launch in the first place or appears distorted, it probably means there is a problem with the display resolution or there are some aspect ratios that aren’t supported. You should try to change your Monitor’s or TV’s display resolution and try again.

If this doesn’t work, you can try running the game in windowed mode and see if this does the trick. You can access these settings by right-clicking on the application and navigating to the compatibility tab.

Solution 5: Repairing Game and Resetting Settings

Another thing which you can try is repairing your game. This action will ensure that you do not have any bad files in your system which may be providing a hurdle and missing files are also known to cause black screen during launch. Follow the steps listed below to repair your game:

1. Launch the Blizzard Battle.net application on your computer.
2. Select Overwatch from the list of games, click the ‘gears’ icon present to open the options and select “Scan and Repair”.

3. After Beginning Scan, wait for the repair to finish. After the process is done, restart your computer and check if you can play the game.
4. If this doesn’t fix it, navigate to the game installation folder and delete any two “.dll” files. Try repairing after doing that and check if it works.

If repairing the game doesn’t solve the problem, you can reset all the settings. There are some game settings that are incompatible with certain hardware and resetting these settings will cause the values to go to a default state hence removing any problems (if any).

1. Open the Battle.net application on your computer.
2. Select Overwatch from the list of games, click the ‘gears’ icon present to open the options and select “Reset”.
3. After the reset, restart your computer and check if the crashing has stopped.

Solution 6: Updating/rolling back Graphics drivers

Graphics card manufacturers roll our frequent updates to include more features and reduce bugs all the time. You should explore the internet, google your hardware and see if there are any available drivers for you to install. Either this or you can let Windows automatically update them for you. Nevertheless, a little research might make the troubleshooting easier for you.

Furthermore, if updating the drivers doesn’t work for you, you should consider rolling back the drivers to a previous build. It is not a surprise to know that newer drivers are sometimes not stable or conflict with the operating system.

Note: Do not ignore Intel Display Drivers. If your computer has Intel HD/UHD drivers even if you are using some other one, you have to make sure they are updated to the latest build.

1. Install the utility Display Driver Uninstaller. You can continue without this step but this ensures that there are no remnants of the drivers.
2. After installing Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), launch your computer in safe mode.
3. After booting your computer into safe mode, launch the application which was just installed.
4. After launching the application, select the first option “Clean and restart”. The application will then automatically uninstall the installed drivers and restart your computer accordingly.

5. Boot your computer into normal mode, press Windows + R, type “devmgmt.msc” in the dialogue box and press Enter. Most probably the default drivers will be installed. If not, right-click on any empty space and select “Scan for hardware changes”.
6. Now there are two options. Either you can search online for the latest driver available for your hardware from the manufacturer’s website such as NVIDIA etc. (and install manually) or you can let Windows install the latest version itself (search for updates automatically).
7. We will take a look at installing automatically. Right-click on your hardware and select “Update driver”. Select the first option “Search automatically for updated driver software”. Choose the second option if you are updating manually and select “Browse for driver” and navigate to the location where you downloaded.

8. Restart your computer after installing the drivers, launch the game and check if this solves the problem.

Solution 7: Perform a Memory Test

Most games and applications rely on RAM to temporarily store the loaded files and it is one of the most important parts of the computer. However, if one or more of your RAMS has gone bad, it will prevent the game from working properly and the game will crash periodically. Therefore, download this tool and run a mem test to verify that your RAMS are working properly.

In addition to this, try performing a malware scan with Malwarebytes to ensure there isn’t any malware that is preventing the game from running.

Tip: You should also make sure that your Intel drives have the latest drivers installed. Also, make sure that you try to run the game after disabling the antivirus software on the computer.