SOLVED: Game Freezes Every Few Seconds

[Hestia]

Looking for any advice on solving my issue. I played the game for over 100 hours without any problems, only for it to start freezing for a moment every few seconds. This freezing isn't just in-game either: the main menu and the loading screen logos also freeze up.

This freezing started happening after I lost internet connection in the middle of a game and was sent back to the main menu. I closed the game to go troubleshoot my internet connection. When I opened it back up later that day, the game started freezing every few seconds, and I've had this problem ever since.

Things I have already tried:
- Adjusting resolution and graphics settings
- Restarting the game and my computer
- Turning off steam overlay
- Updating my graphics card drivers (Radeon RX 570)
- Verifying the integrity of the game's files through steam
- Uninstalling and reinstalling the game
- Making sure the game and steam are running in administrator mode

I have also tried running several other games since these freezes started happening, and no other games are having any issues, it's just Elden Ring.

Any suggestions or other ideas on how to fix it would be appreciated. I am also sending in a support ticket, but who knows how long it will take them to get back to me, or if they will even respond at all.

UPDATE: I have found the solution to my issue. Since I have two monitors, I was looking up potential fixes on one monitor while I had my game open in the other, and noticed that the game ran perfectly without freezing, BUT ONLY while in the background. As soon as I alt-tabbed or click back to Elden Ring, the freezing resumed.

I looked up what could cause a game to only run well while in the background, and discovered that connections to USB devices could be the issue. I opened up my computer's device manager, and lo and behold, the device manager was constantly refreshing itself every few seconds, at about the same frequency that the game was freezing. I disconnected my USB devices one by one, figured out that it was my headset's connection causing the issue, and plugged my headset into a different USB slot. Now everything runs smoothly again.

Thanks again to everyone who replied, hopefully this saves someone else a headache in the future.

[GH(+)ST]

might be strange, but have you tried disabling firewall settings or restarting your modem and pc? it could be some kind of networking issue as it seems it is related to having connection issues.

[Goosetave]

Originally posted by Kupojo:

- Making sure the game and steam are running in administrator mode

Bad idea, never EVER run any app you can't 100% trust as admin. And you most definitely cannot trust fromsoft with security.

[Hestia]

Originally posted by A Certain Someone:

might be strange, but have you tried disabling firewall settings or restarting your modem and pc? it could be some kind of networking issue as it seems it is related to having connection issues.

Thanks for the reply! I tried what you suggested but the issue still persists. Even tried starting the game entirely in offline mode so it wouldn't try to connect to anything but it still freezes up every few seconds.

[Kaptain KFC]

It could be your cpu. Current optimization aside when the game does what you mentioned ive notice that my cpu will have 100% for a second then drop to about 60 to 70% then be fine for an hour or two. Im using a i7-6700k at 1080p and in general its works perfectly fine with the everything maxed out. But its also do to optimization.

Try doing a clean re-install of the game ( deleting anything involving the game) but make a backup of your save first. I dont know if cloud saving is a thing yet.
Ive also noticed that putting the game on a ssd helps out ALOT. Try that if you haven't already.

[Hestia]

Originally posted by Kaptain KFC:

It could be your cpu. Current optimization aside when the game does what you mentioned ive notice that my cpu will have 100% for a second then drop to about 60 to 70% then be fine for an hour or two. Im using a i7-6700k at 1080p and in general its works perfectly fine with the everything maxed out. But its also do to optimization.

Try doing a clean re-install of the game ( deleting anything involving the game) but make a backup of your save first. I dont know if cloud saving is a thing yet.
Ive also noticed that putting the game on a ssd helps out ALOT. Try that if you haven't already.

Thank you for the response! I did a clean re-install removing any files related to Elden Ring or Easy Anti-Cheat. I also disabled cloud saves to prevent steam from re-downloading old copies of the deleted files. Unfortunately I still have the freezing issues. My computer only has an SSD, so the game has been running on one since the beginning. I checked my computer's usage metrics while running the game as well, but GPU, RAM, VRAM, and CPU all stay well below 100% usage, and there is no spike in usage when the game freezes.

[WeAsOneRise]

I am dealing with this now and man it's so annoying..... I have put 60 hours in just a few months ago, decided to jump back in and make a new character and now it freezes for a solid second or 2 every so often but quite frequently and I can not find a fix. I know it's not my set up because I am well above what I need to run this game on high... Also I have played it before and never had this. Seems somewhere in between some update caused this.. bs.

[dark-breed]

Originally posted by WeAsOneRise:

I am dealing with this now and man it's so annoying..... I have put 60 hours in just a few months ago, decided to jump back in and make a new character and now it freezes for a solid second or 2 every so often but quite frequently and I can not find a fix. I know it's not my set up because I am well above what I need to run this game on high... Also I have played it before and never had this. Seems somewhere in between some update caused this.. bs.

this discussion is from may.....

what you can do:

delete tempfiles and shader cache

completely deinstall the GPU driver with DDU and reinstall it clean.

close any 3rd party antivirus/anti malware software.
if you use apps like ICUE or other LED control software deinstall it (closing is not enough)

[dowhatsimonsayz]

Did you ever find a fix for this?

[Kiphyr]

Originally posted by Goosetave:

Originally posted by Kupojo:

- Making sure the game and steam are running in administrator mode

Bad idea, never EVER run any app you can't 100% trust as admin. And you most definitely cannot trust fromsoft with security.

This has to be sarcasm?

[darkintegral]

This post fix it for me.
Lag spiked every other second.
Googled, found this, opened device manager found my external sound usb driver malfunctioning.
Unplugged and fix it.
Thank you for making this post.

[Merqui]

for those, who still struggles,this might help you.
It seems like, Elden Ring doesn't like when you reconnect your peripherials (e.g.: mouse, keyboard, headphones,..).
Game can go really bananas when you're using wireless ones, so make sure you have your stuff connected to PC via cable or turned off.
To me, only thing that can be wireless is Xbox Controller with official dongle, other than that it freezes.
And if you still getting those GPU utilization drops, you might need to check reddit post mentioned bellow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/12jy9v1/gpu_usage_randomly_drops_to_0_causing_lagging_2/

[John Titor]

Originally posted by Merqui:

for those, who still struggles,this might help you.
It seems like, Elden Ring doesn't like when you reconnect your peripherials (e.g.: mouse, keyboard, headphones,..).
Game can go really bananas when you're using wireless ones, so make sure you have your stuff connected to PC via cable or turned off.
To me, only thing that can be wireless is Xbox Controller with official dongle, other than that it freezes.
And if you still getting those GPU utilization drops, you might need to check reddit post mentioned bellow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/12jy9v1/gpu_usage_randomly_drops_to_0_causing_lagging_2/

My god, this thread is a haven for touchers of the dead. Burn it!

[onilink_100]

Originally posted by Aikaro || Twitch:

Originally posted by Goosetave:

Bad idea, never EVER run any app you can't 100% trust as admin. And you most definitely cannot trust fromsoft with security.

This has to be sarcasm?

For anyone else gravedigging dead thread, professional software is usually designed around not needing admin privileges. The ability to run it as admin is left possible as a debug option but represents a major bypass of security and should be done with caution.

And as for Fromsoft, love them but they've left huge security issues unpatched in previous games that were so egregious that the community adopted a third party mod to patch them.