Frequent crashes during missions

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Technical Support
1

Issue Type (Required):

Crash - During Play

Issue Description (Required):

Starting yesterday I have started having frequent crashes during missions, it immedietly shuts down Darktide and hits me with the desktop. No “Darktide stopped working” or somesuch, just straight to desktop and the crash log.
I’ve only played expeditions so I can’t definitively say it that it would also happen during normal missions as well, but I would assume so.
I’ve had similar crashes to this previously but those were always few and far between.

Yesterday while observing RAM and VRAM usage I observed both continually climbing during gameplay. Usually they would fluctuate but while playing it would, for example, hit 8 gb VRAM usage in the Mourningstar, plateau, then once in a mission continually climb until eventual crash, even if exiting the mission and going back to the hub, the VRAM and RAM usage during the mission is now the new “baseline” or whatever you’d call it.

Looking through Event Viewer I am finding “Event 1001, Windows Error Reporting” that line up with the crashes, and digging through WATCHDOG .dmp files it is reporting process_name “dwm.exe” and “Module_name: dxgkrnl”.
And looking into the Darktide crash dump
Is it related? I am no programmer but it felt worth mentioning.

Event viewer:
Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: LiveKernelEvent
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: 193
P2: 80e
P3: ffff840cc67770c0
P4: ffffc20055acbd70
P5: 0
P6: 10_0_26200
P7: 0_0
P8: 768_1
P9:
P10:

Darktide crash dump:
PROCESS_NAME: Darktide.exe

READ_ADDRESS: 0000000000000000

ERROR_CODE: (NTSTATUS) 0xc0000005 - The instruction at 0x%p referenced memory at 0x%p. The memory could not be %s.

EXCEPTION_CODE_STR: c0000005

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER1: 0000000000000000

EXCEPTION_PARAMETER2: 0000000000000000

SYMBOL_NAME: Darktide+53d39b

MODULE_NAME: Darktide

IMAGE_NAME: Darktide.exe

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: INVALID_POINTER_READ_c0000005_Darktide.exe!Unknown

The VRAM issue seems like it has been fixed today. The RAM usage climbing issue seems to remain, albeit much slower than yesterday. It’s still giving the same event ID, though. GPU usage seems to be a lot higher than usual, even with DLSS and FG, not sure if it has any relevance but mentioning it anyway.

As for things I’ve tried:
Disabling cloud saving and deleted the appdata Darktide folder, verified files.
Uninstalling and redownloaded Darktide.
Deleted the NVIDIA shader cache, restarted pc, then set it to unlimited (previously it was set to default).
Updated and done a clean install of the latest NVIDIA driver.
Updated Windows to the latest version.
Ran the Windows System File Checker, DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and sfc /scannow. I did note that it did repair something during it related to bluetooth. Probably not relevant I’m guessing.
Disabled all background programs and any overlays that could be interfering with the game.
Ran Windows Memory Diagnostic, no issues detected.

Sorry for the wall of text. Thank you.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Often (<75%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

[PC] Crash Report (Optional):

GUID: 5abd6d88-dfef-40c0-a73a-1a39f5f4e026
Log File:
Info Type:

[Engine Error]: Access violation (0xc0000005) in build 57a47fe1b65efd09b188a31a8ec011df2e5b0509
accessing address 0000000000000000 from 00007FF61969D39B

GUID: c42b8ae2-b487-4e73-b2cc-8369eaa533bc
Log File:
Info Type:

[Engine Error]: Access violation (0xc0000005) in build 57a47fe1b65efd09b188a31a8ec011df2e5b0509
accessing address 0000000000000000 from 00007FF71EABD39B

GUID: 1ee28f9f-1b1e-4472-b641-4dbdb14bda9f
Log File:
Info Type:

[Engine Error]: Access violation (0xc0000005) in build 57a47fe1b65efd09b188a31a8ec011df2e5b0509
accessing address 0000000000000000 from 00007FF608E9D39B

[PC] Upload Console Log & darktide_launcher.log (Optional):

darktide_launcher.log (215 KB)console-2026-06-24-15.33.11-5abd6d88-dfef-40c0-a73a-1a39f5f4e026.log (604 KB)console-2026-06-24-10.52.09-c42b8ae2-b487-4e73-b2cc-8369eaa533bc.log (568 KB)console-2026-06-24-10.06.50-a4360356-135f-4f4c-9575-c7f967ec126f.log (712 KB)

2

Sorry to hear this @asphyxia

You’ve already tried a lot of things we suggest in these cases, hmm.

Something that may be worth looking into, is checking your motherboard manufacturer’s website for any available BIOS update. Darktide is very CPU-intensive - and outdates BIOS will very often result in instability. With firmware updates, we do advise caution and to do so at your own risk.

Another suggest, is to try switching to our Experimental Build.

This Darktide build version includes subtle changes that we trial, some of which focus on stability and performance - so I’m hoping that you may have a more positive experience using it.

To do so:

  1. Open the Steam client
  2. Right-click Darktide in your Steam library
  3. Select ‘Properties’
  4. Select ‘Betas’
  5. Enter the password cTYPtKTsfMDsLHAV
  6. Select ‘Check Code’
  7. Select the ‘None’ dropdown, and experimental - Experimental Builds should now be within the list
  8. Select experimental - Experimental Builds
  9. Close the pop-up window
  10. A download should now start

Please let me know how things go!

3

I will give the experimental build and get back to you! While consistent it varies in the amount of time before it occurs. Anything in particular to keep an eye out for and observe that would be helpful? In case I forgot something in the initial post.

4

Nice, thanks! They are non-descript Access Violation crashes so it’s difficult really. Perhaps keep an eye on any background applications/processes e.g. overlays or Anti-Virus perhaps just in case something is hooking in, or firing off in the background and conflicting.

Otherwise, instability could still be being caused by outdated BIOS and CPU strain perhaps.

5

Sadly I have to report that it does still do the sudden crash even experimental build. It’s not a huge sample size but it did seem to take longer before the crash happened though. I did one expedition fine and then it crashed during the second. Could just be coincidence ofc though!

GUID: 64049bbc-5aff-4ed2-85e0-6f5323945397
Log File:
Info Type:

[Engine Error]: Access violation (0xc0000005) in build 57a47fe1b65efd09b188a31a8ec011df2e5b0509

accessing address 0000000000000000 from 00007FF6B746D39B

console-2026-06-26-11.47.31-64049bbc-5aff-4ed2-85e0-6f5323945397.log (1.1 MB)

6

Ah okay :frowning: still an Access Violation, with little go on, unfortunately.

Did you check for any available BIOS update?

Otherwise, I can only think to perhaps try a Windows OS repair/install, but I appreciate this is quite a length to go to, and I can’t guarantee it will resolve the issue.

7

I have not yet tried updating BIOS but it’s getting to that point! I was always told that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, regarding BIOS. But it’s definitely worth a shot!

Could an unstable underwolt cause Access Violations? The underwolt has held for years but maybe something about expeditions and something in the new update pushes it to an edge case, or would it affect more things than Darktide if that was the case?

Worth asking since it’s related-ish to BIOS and all!

8

That’s fair! I’m never too keen to suggest BIOS updates, given the severity should it go wrong - but it has definitely helped in the past in many cases for Ryzen CPU’s.

The undervolt could be worth testing, just in case! At this stage, I’m scratching my head at what else we can try :thinking: