Fix: Sons of the Forest Keeps Crashing and Freezing

Since the Sons of The Forest is not optimized the way players want, it often gets crashes, freezes, and causes low Frames Per Second (FPS). Sons of The Forest has just been released, which is why it cannot provide the best performance even if you have a high-budget gaming PC.

There are some ways you can use to optimize the game to prevent stuttering, crashes, freezes, and low FPS. We have mentioned all the solutions from basics to advance. Kindly follow up one by one to fix your issue.

Before applying the following solutions, make sure you meet the minimum system requirements of the game.

1. Verify Game Files

The first solution in the list is to verify the integrity of games, which is known to fix all issues that occur during gameplay. If you already did that, and the issue persists, move on to the other methods.

1. To verify the game files, open Steam and go to Library from the top.
2. Then, right-click the Sons of The Forest and select Properties.

   

3. Then, go to Local Files from the left and click Verify the integrity of game files.
   Note: It will take some time to verify the game files.

   

4. Once done, launch the game.

2. Update GPU drivers

The outdated GPU drivers often cause freezing and crashing issues. Hence, it is necessary to keep the GPU drivers updated if they get outdated. Outdated driver not only impacts gaming performance but impacts overall PC performance due to lack of communication.

Regardless of having outdated drivers, you can also face this issue if the drivers are corrupted. Hence, try updating the GPU drivers, which will overwrite the corrupted drivers.

Follow the steps:

1. Open your GPU vendor application, such as AMD Radeon Software or Geforce Experience. If you don’t use the GPU vendor application, go to the GPU manufacturer’s site and download the latest GPU driver from there.
2. Now go to the driver section and click Check for updates.
3. Once the driver is found, install it on your Windows.

   

4. Then, check whether the Sons of The Forest is still crashing or not.

3. Reinstall Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables

Microsoft Visual C++ is a library that contains different versions of MS Visual C++. It is used to run the applications and games that are developed using C++ or C language.

Hence, if the DLL files of MS Visual c++ are corrupted, causing this issue, reinstalling the MS Visual C++ will restore them, which will fix this issue. To do so, follow the steps:

1. Right-click the Start Menu and select Run from the options.

   

2. Type appwiz.cpl in the input search box and click OK to navigate.

   

3. Here, right-click the MS Visual C++ versions one by one and click Uninstall.

   

4. Now download the Microsoft Visual C++ using the attached link.
5. Now double-click the MS visual installer and click the Install button.

   

6. Once done, restart your computer.

4. Reset Sons Of The Forest Settings

Using high graphics or incompatible settings can also lead to crashes, freezing, and low FPS. For that reason, you can try resetting the Sons Of The Forest settings to their default by deleting the game folder from the AppData, which stores the applications and games configuration settings.

1. To do so, open Run Program by using the Win + R keys simultaneously.
2. Enter appdata and hit Enter, which will open the AppData folder.

   

3. Navigate to the Local folder and delete the Sons Of The Forest folder.

   

4. Once done, launch the game. This will create a game data folder will automatically.

5. Run Sons Of The Forest with Administrator Permissions

Running Sons Of The Forest in administrator mode will allow the game to access the files that the game needs to run properly. It also helps bypass the interference from the Windows firewall. Thus, the application runs without any issues.

1. To do so, right-click the Sons Of The Forest shortcut. If not created, then navigate to the game directory and right-click on it.
2. Go to Properties, then go to Compatibility.

   

3. Then, tick Run this program as an administrator.
4. Additionally, tick Disable fullscreen optimizations. This will disable the Windows built-in optimization for the game.

   

5. Once done, launch the game and see the result.

6. Use Different versions of DirectX

This issue can also be caused by using an incompatible or outdated version of DirectX. DirectX is a library that contains a collection of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) used to communicate with the graphics card to do various different tasks, such as multimedia, rendering, etc., especially required for games.

You can try the different versions of DirectX to run the game. You can achieve this by using the launch options, which is a feature on Steam that allows users to input the commands that the game will follow to run the game.

Here are the instructions:

1. Open Steam and navigate to Library.
2. Right-click the Sons of The Forest and go to Properties.
3. Then, enter one of the following directX versions in the launch option to test them one by one.
   -dx12, -dx11 or -d3d11

   

4. One of the directX versions should work correctly with your game. If not, then try other methods.

7. Close Background and Overlays applications

Running many overlays and background applications can cause computer resources to run out of memory, which causes the main application or game to freeze and stutter. Thus, you will have to close all the background and overlays applications, especially chrome and discord, before launching the game.

If the Sons of The Forest runs without any issue after closing background and overlays applications such as discord, but you want to communicate with your friends while playing the game, then disable the Discord overlay feature and then try again.

8. Increase Virtual Memory

Virtual Memory can be allocated from the SSD or Hard drive, which can be used when the RAM usage overflows from the limit. It is possible that the game is using a lot of RAM resources, resulting in freezing and crashes. Thus, you can try increasing the virtual memory to see whether the issue is fixed or not.

To do so, follow the steps:

1. Click the Start Menu logo and type View Advanced System Settings.

   

2. Open the settings and click Settings under Performance.

   

3. Then, go to Advanced and click Change under Virtual Memory.

   

4. Untick Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.
5. Finally, select Custome Size and input the initial size and maximum size according to the amount of RAM installed on your system. For example, if you have 8GB of RAM, the initial size should be 1.5 x 8GB, and the maximum size should be 2 X 8 GB.

   

6. Once done, click OK, restart your computer, and launch the game to see the changes.

9. Configure Graphics Preference settings

You can configure the Graphics Preference Settings to prevent stuttering and freezing. Graphics preference settings lets users select between the iGPU and discrete GPU. If your game is running on an integrated GPU, it will result in crashing or freezing. Thus, configure graphics preference settings to select the discrete GPU, especially if you have a laptop.

To configure the graphics preference settings, follow the steps:

1. Press the Windows key, and search for Graphics Settings.

   

2. Open the Graphics Settings, click Browse, go to the game directory, and select the SonsOfTheForest.exe file.
3. Then, click Add. Once added, select Sons Of The Forest from the added apps and click Options.

   

4. Then, select High performance and click Save.

   

5. Now launch the game to check for the issue.

10. Move the game to the SSD or Nvme

If you have a Solid State Drive (SSD) or Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe), we recommend you transfer the game into it as it is much faster than the normal hard drive, which can fix this issue. To do so, follow the instructions:

1. To do so, open Steam, right-click Sons Of The Forest, and open Properties.
2. Go to Local Files and click Move installer folder.

   

3. Now select the drive and click Move.

   

4. Wait for the game to move, then try launching the game to see the results.

11. Update Windows

In some cases, the game crashes and freezes due to outdated security features. Outdated security features are incompatible with the latest games and applications, which causes them to crash and freeze. Hence, if you don’t have a habit of updating Windows, try it, as it can fix this issue.

1. To do so, click the Start Menu and type Check for updates.
2. Open the settings, and click Check for updates. And if Windows detects the updates, download and install them.

   

3. Once done, restart your computer and open the game that keeps freezing or crashing to check the result.

12. Reinstall the Game

If your game is still crashing or freezing, try reinstalling the game, which might work for you. However, if that does not work, wait for the next update. Since it is a new game, the developers will take some time to optimize the game for all of their users. So be patient and wait for the next update, which will automatically fix your issue.