Game is not launching after splash art on Official Realm, works fine on Modded Realm

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Technical Support
1

Issue Type (Required):

Crash - On Launch

Issue Description (Required):

Laptop Specs:
Windows 10 Home not activated
HP Omen 15
AMD Ryzen 7 4800H
NVidia GTX 1660Ti Mobile

I’ve been having issues launching the game for a long time. Initially, around November 2023 it would sometimes fail to launch, as in the splash art would show and disappear, then the game would not start, even though Steam would show it as running and I could stop it from Steam. I worked around it by using the launcher bypass in Steam launch options.

On saturday (20.01.2024) I started getting a bluescreen error after ~5-10mins of gameplay, no matter if I stayed in the initial hub or actually started/joined a game. That same day, before this started happening I did run ‘wsl --install’ to install WSL, as well as removed my old Visual Studio 2017 install in favor of a new 2022 one (both of which may be completely irrelevant, but it is a bit suspicious). Bluescreen would show that the error was KMOD_EXCETION_NOT_HANDLED caused by EasyAntiCheat.sys. At that point I tried many fixes:

  • install latest Visual C++ redistributables
  • clean reinstall of Nvidia drivers
  • removed the EeasyAntiCheat.sys file so it gets redownloaded
  • set max worker threads to 6, down from 13
  • verified the integrity of game files in Steam
  • verified integrity of Windows files with ‘sfc /scannow’
  • tried both DirectX 11 and 12
  • lowered settings from Extreme to High (Extreme were the ones autodetected by the game itself)
  • updated the BIOS from Windows Update

After doing the BIOS Update the game would just consistently not launch after splash art was shown. After that I tried another set of fixes:

  • downloaded HP Assistant Software and performed another BIOS update from there
  • added <Vermintide 2 path>/binaries, <Vermintide 2 path>/binaries_dx12 and C://Program Files (x64)/EasyAntiCheat folders to Windows Defender exceptions
  • added the respective binaries to firewall exceptions for both private and public networks
  • ran the EAC_setup.exe and clicked “Repair” to repair EAC

So right now I keep getting the splash-art-but-no-actual-game-launch situation on Official Realms, but I am able to launch the game with no issues on Modded Realms.

Couple of last things that I have been holding out from doing:

  • selective startup, as I have seen people in similar situations not getting anything from that
  • clean reinstall of V2, as my internet connection is not the fastest and it would take a long time, while I have seen this being not effective
  • factory reset of Windows 10

Is there any other fix that I could go before trying the 3 aforementioned invasive methods? As the problem very much seems to be EAC, I was hoping for a way to reset just EAC or its settings.

Thanks for any advice

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

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

Steam (PC)

Player ID (Optional):

[PC] Upload Console Log & vermintide2_launcher.log (Optional):

vermintide2_launcher.log (103 KB)
console-2024-01-23-16.22.20-41e6a0a8-a877-438b-a058-5632cc5f9aa9.log (119 KB)
user_settings.config (7.37 KB)
launcher.config (144 Bytes)

2

Hi @Pablo1785,

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble launching in Official realm. As you can launch in Modded realm, but not Official this indicates an EAC-related issue.

I can see you’ve already tried a good few things - I would recommend performing a Selective Startup in this instance, as it may be that an external application is conflicting with EAC:

  1. Press the Windows key
  2. Type ‘msconfig’ and select ‘System Configuration’
  3. On the ‘General’ tab, select ‘Selective Startup’
  4. Deselect ‘Load startup Items’
  5. Reboot your PC

If the issues no longer occur after having performed the Selective Startup, try re-introducing your programs one-by-one to determine which is the culprit.

Additionally, this may be an Anti-Virus/Firewall problem. Please ensure you have appropriate exceptions in place for both Vermintide 2 and Easy Anti-Cheat. You’ll need to add the following exceptions:

  • vermintide2.exe in \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Warhammer Vermintide 2\binaries
  • vermintide2_dx12.exe in \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Warhammer Vermintide 2\binaries_dx12
  • EasyAntiCheat.exe in \Program Files (x86)\EasyAntiCheat

The Blue Screen errors do suggest a deeper system-level issue. So, if the above doesn’t work, it may be worth considering a clean reinstallation of Vermintide 2, or perhaps a fresh Windows install worst case. If you find BSOD errors persist, there may be some helpful steps you can take in this article:

Please let me know you get on.

3

Thanks for a quick response.

Fortunately, turns out the game is actually back to the original (albeit, still a bit annoying), sometimes-launching state, so after trying to launch 1-2 times it starts up as normal even on Official Realms.

This isn’t ideal but hopefully it will work for now.

And for other people having similar issues this probably means that one of these methods did work. I did not do the steps precisely in the order I presented, but the last two things I did was the HP Software Assistant BIOS update and the firewall + windows defender exceptions, so probably one of those did the trick.

4

Glad to hear that things have improved! :slight_smile: