Potential crash/game not launching fixes

[Joliro]

so after many tests and searches through the forums I decided to compile some fixes that helped some people and might help you. As always try to update your windows first and foremost.

So there has been many problems, notably people not being able to launch the game or people crashing either in menus or middle of a match, those can be fixed it seems but will depend from person for person and system from system.

lets talk about the game not launching:

on my tests it seems that running the game on admin DOES make the game not launch at all, which will probably require a fresh install for the user (was necessary on my end)

another problem might be steam or battle net being dumb and not recognising the games install path (installing the game in another drive for example), which via a file called bootstrap.txt or bootstrap.log in the games root folder it will say something like "invalid install path".
This one was solved for some people by installing the game in the same drive that steam is installed, so if steam is installed on c:/program files (x86)/steam your game installation should look like c:/program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/call of duty HQ or something like that. Another fix is installing steam in the same drive that windows is installed (which means your main drive) and install the game there too (basically the same thing I said above) - I personally didn't have this problem even with the game installed on another SSD but one might have

Another problem is with game crashing randomly very quickly or even not launching, while I didn't see if bootstrap.log says something different, some people have fixed that via disabling XMP on your motherboard BIOS, just restart your system, enter the BIOS and turn off XMP (you can set the RAM speed manually, in my rig XMP doesn't really work so I have to set up RAM speeds manually, prob because my CPU doesn't accept speeds higher than 3000mhz, IDK) - I personally didn't have this problem since I don't use XMP, but some people might have

After that some people might have crashes, either in middle of the matches or menus (get an error with something like game_ship or steam_game_ship), that happened for me. Bootstrap.log said this for me: Success launching "cod.exe hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc".
after much deliberation I think I was suffering from VRAM leak, which I believe might be an issue for MANY people, but there is some stuff that one can do about it. The culprit might be NVIDIA new drivers, it might be the game (I would assume it is the game since MW2019 has RAM memory leak problems that I fixed using a software called intelligent standby list cleaner - very recommended to use because windows is dumb too).
Thankfully the game provides MANY amounts of options that can get your better performance in the game, I will list the options that one can turn off and test out and see if that was being the sole culprit:
- turn off on demand textures stream on graphics settings
- put spot cache on low
- turn off nvidia reflex low latency
- turn off parallax effects on interface
- turning off/on vsync

if that doesn't fix my guess is the person is still suffering from VRAM leak, my theory is that something dumb in the game might think that if one is using more than 4GB of VRAM (aka more than the min. requirement) the game thinks the person has unlimited VRAM, so it will keep increasing and increasing the usage until the game crashes.
(that was the problem in MW2019 at launch, if one had 8GB or more of ram, more than the min. requirement, the game wouldn't know the ram limit the person had, so it would increase and increase until your whole system crashed with a BSOD, I noticed that because my friend I played with was running only 4GB on his system, and wasn't getting BSODs while me had 16 and was suffering from it).
to fix the VRAM leak on MW2 one might want to reduce the ram usage to something below 4GB by reducing texture resolution and other graphic configs (for example I'm using 3.7GB total, 3 from the game 0.7 from other apps) and I had no crashes so far for 4-5 hours so I think its either totally fixed or it might only crash after more than 5 hours of playing. The same friend (he now has 16GB of RAM so its fine XD) has a 1650 GPU which only has 4GB of vram, and he's not suffering from these crashes specifically so I think the key is really use less than 4GB of VRAM.
This might not be a 100% fix but at least I had no crashes, will update the post if I discover anything else or if I crash XD. Also I dunno if DLSS or setting unlimited framerate makes the game crash, I personally am not using it and set up 60 FPS limit, will test out if it happens with DLSS on and without the framerate cap. (tested with DLSS and unlimited framerate, no problems on that front)

The crashes that happened while on party should be fixed according to IW so that one should be ok.

If your game has some screen flickering or many graphic artifacts then it might be because of NVIDIA new drivers (526.47), solution is basically to rollback to other drivers like the 516.59 or the 522.25. That one is on NVIDIA because it seems people were having issues in other games with driver 526.47. - I personally am not having any issues with driver 526.47 whatsoever so maybe I'm blessed on that front

If you're running AMD maybe you're fine in that front, if not rollback to a more tried and tested driver should solve, I don't have an AMD GPU to test so I cannot say for sure.

An user pointed out an error with a file missing (MFPlat.dll) here and another pointed out a solution, as quoted: "I installed the Windows Media Feature Pack and its now working for me.
i had Windows 10 N and apparently the pack isn't included in that version.

Check out this link:
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/download-media-feature-pack-windows-8-kn-versions"


This all should be all the potential fixes I found running around here in the forum discussions and around the web, and some I have tested myself so if it solved for you please say so in this post. If you tried something else and solved please also say here

for the curious, PC config and other details:
B350 BIOSTAR motherboard
64GB RAM (3000mhz speed)
MSI RTX 2060 6GB
AMD ryzen 5 2600X
running 4 drives (3 SSD 1 HDD)
650W PSU
game is for now installed in my root drive, same place as my steam install, will later transfer to my more spacious SSD
am using 3.7VRAM from game configs, turned off parallax in interface, 60 FPS limit, using amd fidelityfx cas, turned off on demand textures stream and put cache spot on low, video memory scale on maximum, turned off nvidia reflex low latency, turned off dynamic resolution.

[itzjerkintime]

I would rather vacuum my backyard than try and decipher this. Just explain to me how the game worked fine day one and then they release an update and its broken. I'm going to try this at work on Monday. Ill find something that is working just fine and I will work on it and when i am done ill be satisfied but it will be broken.

[J1ocks2481]

[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Failed to match driver digest index (0).
[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Success launching "cod.exe -uid auks hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc"

ive tried everything and cannot get this fixed, i refunded the game and bought it on battle.net hoping for a fix but to no avail. at this point ive given up.

[Silentium TikTok]

Originally posted by Joliro:

so after many tests and searches through the forums I decided to compile some fixes that helped some people and might help you. As always try to update your windows first and foremost.

So there has been many problems, notably people not being able to launch the game or people crashing either in menus or middle of a match, those can be fixed it seems but will depend from person for person and system from system.

lets talk about the game not launching:

on my tests it seems that running the game on admin DOES make the game not launch at all, which will probably require a fresh install for the user (was necessary on my end)

another problem might be steam or battle net being dumb and not recognising the games install path (installing the game in another drive for example), which via a file called bootstrap.txt or bootstrap.log in the games root folder it will say something like "invalid install path".
This one was solved for some people by installing the game in the same drive that steam is installed, so if steam is installed on c:/program files (x86)/steam your game installation should look like c:/program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/call of duty HQ or something like that. Another fix is installing steam in the same drive that windows is installed (which means your main drive) and install the game there too (basically the same thing I said above) - I personally didn't have this problem even with the game installed on another SSD but one might have

Another problem is with game crashing randomly very quickly or even not launching, while I didn't see if bootstrap.log says something different, some people have fixed that via disabling XMP on your motherboard BIOS, just restart your system, enter the BIOS and turn off XMP (you can set the RAM speed manually, in my rig XMP doesn't really work so I have to set up RAM speeds manually, prob because my CPU doesn't accept speeds higher than 3000mhz, IDK) - I personally didn't have this problem since I don't use XMP, but some people might have

After that some people might have crashes, either in middle of the matches or menus (get an error with something like game_ship or steam_game_ship), that happened for me. Bootstrap.log said this for me: Success launching "cod.exe hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc".
after much deliberation I think I was suffering from VRAM leak, which I believe might be an issue for MANY people, but there is some stuff that one can do about it. The culprit might be NVIDIA new drivers, it might be the game (I would assume it is the game since MW2019 has RAM memory leak problems that I fixed using a software called intelligent standby list cleaner - very recommended to use because windows is dumb too).
Thankfully the game provides MANY amounts of options that can get your better performance in the game, I will list the options that one can turn off and test out and see if that was being the sole culprit:
- turn off on demand textures stream on graphics settings
- put spot cache on low
- turn off nvidia reflex low latency
- turn off parallax effects on interface

if that doesn't fix my guess is the person is still suffering from VRAM leak, my theory is that something dumb in the game might think that if one is using more than 4GB of VRAM (aka more than the min. requirement) the game thinks the person has unlimited VRAM, so it will keep increasing and increasing the usage until the game crashes.
(that was the problem in MW2019 at launch, if one had 8GB or more of ram, more than the min. requirement, the game wouldn't know the ram limit the person had, so it would increase and increase until your whole system crashed with a BSOD, I noticed that because my friend I played with was running only 4GB on his system, and wasn't getting BSODs while me had 16 and was suffering from it).
to fix the VRAM leak on MW2 one might want to reduce the ram usage to something below 4GB by reducing texture resolution and other graphic configs (for example I'm using 3.7GB total, 3 from the game 0.7 from other apps) and I had no crashes so far for 4-5 hours so I think its either totally fixed or it might only crash after more than 5 hours of playing. The same friend (he now has 16GB of RAM so its fine XD) has a 1650 GPU which only has 4GB of vram, and he's not suffering from these crashes specifically so I think the key is really use less than 4GB of VRAM.
This might not be a 100% fix but at least I had no crashes, will update the post if I discover anything else or if I crash XD. Also I dunno if DLSS or setting unlimited framerate makes the game crash, I personally am not using it and set up 60 FPS limit, will test out if it happens with DLSS on and without the framerate cap.

The crashes that happened while on party should be fixed according to IW so that one should be ok.

If your game has some screen flickering or many graphic artifacts then it might be because of NVIDIA new drivers (526.47), solution is basically to rollback to other drivers like the 516.59 or the 522.25. That one is on NVIDIA because it seems people were having issues in other games with driver 526.47. - I personally am not having any issues with driver 526.47 whatsoever so maybe I'm blessed on that front

If you're running AMD maybe you're fine in that front, if not rollback to a more tried and tested driver should solve, I don't have an AMD GPU to test so I cannot say for sure.


This all should be all the potential fixes I found running around here in the forum discussions and around the web, and some I have tested myself so if it solved for you please say so in this post. If you tried something else and solved please also say here

for the curious, PC config and other details:
B350 BIOSTAR motherboard
64GB RAM (3000mhz speed)
MSI RTX 2060 6GB
AMD ryzen 5 2600X
running 4 drives (3 SSD 1 HDD)
650W PSU
game is for now installed in my root drive, same place as my steam install, will later transfer to my more spacious SSD
am using 3.7VRAM from game configs, turned off parallax in interface, 60 FPS limit, using amd fidelityfx cas, turned off on demand textures stream and put cache spot on low, video memory scale on maximum, turned off nvidia reflex low latency, turned off dynamic resolution.

How do i not run as admin?

[Silentium TikTok]

Originally posted by J1ocks2481:

[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Failed to match driver digest index (0).
[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Success launching "cod.exe -uid auks hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc"

ive tried everything and cannot get this fixed, i refunded the game and bought it on battle.net hoping for a fix but to no avail. at this point ive given up.

i bought on battlenet then steam. same issues. $170 for nothing

[Joliro]

Originally posted by itzjerkintime:

I would rather vacuum my backyard than try and decipher this. Just explain to me how the game worked fine day one and then they release an update and its broken. I'm going to try this at work on Monday. Ill find something that is working just fine and I will work on it and when i am done ill be satisfied but it will be broken.

thats why I compiled everything I knew, because I know people won't be as patient or curious as others to test stuff out, so depending on whats happening on ones end they test something from here instead of trying to find specific posts around

[Joliro]

Originally posted by J1ocks2481:

[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Failed to match driver digest index (0).
[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Success launching "cod.exe -uid auks hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc"

ive tried everything and cannot get this fixed, i refunded the game and bought it on battle.net hoping for a fix but to no avail. at this point ive given up.

that one is new for me, if I find something about it and a fix I will post here as update. sorry it happened this, it really sucks

[Joliro]

Originally posted by Silentium TikTok:

Originally posted by Joliro:

so after many tests and searches through the forums I decided to compile some fixes that helped some people and might help you. As always try to update your windows first and foremost.

So there has been many problems, notably people not being able to launch the game or people crashing either in menus or middle of a match, those can be fixed it seems but will depend from person for person and system from system.

lets talk about the game not launching:

on my tests it seems that running the game on admin DOES make the game not launch at all, which will probably require a fresh install for the user (was necessary on my end)

another problem might be steam or battle net being dumb and not recognising the games install path (installing the game in another drive for example), which via a file called bootstrap.txt or bootstrap.log in the games root folder it will say something like "invalid install path".
This one was solved for some people by installing the game in the same drive that steam is installed, so if steam is installed on c:/program files (x86)/steam your game installation should look like c:/program files (x86)/steam/steamapps/common/call of duty HQ or something like that. Another fix is installing steam in the same drive that windows is installed (which means your main drive) and install the game there too (basically the same thing I said above) - I personally didn't have this problem even with the game installed on another SSD but one might have

Another problem is with game crashing randomly very quickly or even not launching, while I didn't see if bootstrap.log says something different, some people have fixed that via disabling XMP on your motherboard BIOS, just restart your system, enter the BIOS and turn off XMP (you can set the RAM speed manually, in my rig XMP doesn't really work so I have to set up RAM speeds manually, prob because my CPU doesn't accept speeds higher than 3000mhz, IDK) - I personally didn't have this problem since I don't use XMP, but some people might have

After that some people might have crashes, either in middle of the matches or menus (get an error with something like game_ship or steam_game_ship), that happened for me. Bootstrap.log said this for me: Success launching "cod.exe hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc".
after much deliberation I think I was suffering from VRAM leak, which I believe might be an issue for MANY people, but there is some stuff that one can do about it. The culprit might be NVIDIA new drivers, it might be the game (I would assume it is the game since MW2019 has RAM memory leak problems that I fixed using a software called intelligent standby list cleaner - very recommended to use because windows is dumb too).
Thankfully the game provides MANY amounts of options that can get your better performance in the game, I will list the options that one can turn off and test out and see if that was being the sole culprit:
- turn off on demand textures stream on graphics settings
- put spot cache on low
- turn off nvidia reflex low latency
- turn off parallax effects on interface

if that doesn't fix my guess is the person is still suffering from VRAM leak, my theory is that something dumb in the game might think that if one is using more than 4GB of VRAM (aka more than the min. requirement) the game thinks the person has unlimited VRAM, so it will keep increasing and increasing the usage until the game crashes.
(that was the problem in MW2019 at launch, if one had 8GB or more of ram, more than the min. requirement, the game wouldn't know the ram limit the person had, so it would increase and increase until your whole system crashed with a BSOD, I noticed that because my friend I played with was running only 4GB on his system, and wasn't getting BSODs while me had 16 and was suffering from it).
to fix the VRAM leak on MW2 one might want to reduce the ram usage to something below 4GB by reducing texture resolution and other graphic configs (for example I'm using 3.7GB total, 3 from the game 0.7 from other apps) and I had no crashes so far for 4-5 hours so I think its either totally fixed or it might only crash after more than 5 hours of playing. The same friend (he now has 16GB of RAM so its fine XD) has a 1650 GPU which only has 4GB of vram, and he's not suffering from these crashes specifically so I think the key is really use less than 4GB of VRAM.
This might not be a 100% fix but at least I had no crashes, will update the post if I discover anything else or if I crash XD. Also I dunno if DLSS or setting unlimited framerate makes the game crash, I personally am not using it and set up 60 FPS limit, will test out if it happens with DLSS on and without the framerate cap.

The crashes that happened while on party should be fixed according to IW so that one should be ok.

If your game has some screen flickering or many graphic artifacts then it might be because of NVIDIA new drivers (526.47), solution is basically to rollback to other drivers like the 516.59 or the 522.25. That one is on NVIDIA because it seems people were having issues in other games with driver 526.47. - I personally am not having any issues with driver 526.47 whatsoever so maybe I'm blessed on that front

If you're running AMD maybe you're fine in that front, if not rollback to a more tried and tested driver should solve, I don't have an AMD GPU to test so I cannot say for sure.


This all should be all the potential fixes I found running around here in the forum discussions and around the web, and some I have tested myself so if it solved for you please say so in this post. If you tried something else and solved please also say here

for the curious, PC config and other details:
B350 BIOSTAR motherboard
64GB RAM (3000mhz speed)
MSI RTX 2060 6GB
AMD ryzen 5 2600X
running 4 drives (3 SSD 1 HDD)
650W PSU
game is for now installed in my root drive, same place as my steam install, will later transfer to my more spacious SSD
am using 3.7VRAM from game configs, turned off parallax in interface, 60 FPS limit, using amd fidelityfx cas, turned off on demand textures stream and put cache spot on low, video memory scale on maximum, turned off nvidia reflex low latency, turned off dynamic resolution.

How do i not run as admin?

go to the game root folder, you see the .exe properties when you click it with the right mouse button there should be something on compatibility that says run this program as admin, that option is just turned off for me. When I set it on the game would not launch at all and had to reinstall

[FatalFlaw]

*gasps* I had a BSOD earlier right after a crash during Campaign... I had just fiddled with the maximum VRAM allowed in the settings... This sounds similar.

I have 32gb of RAM and 6gb of VRAM. I'll try out the 4gb limit and get back to you.

[FatalFlaw]

Well... nvm. I can't even get the game to load now.

[Joliro]

Originally posted by Unrelentful:

Well... nvm. I can't even get the game to load now.

that BSOD might or might not have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the games installation, it might be good to reinstall (hopefully your windows installation is not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ tho x_x)

[Dagger]

Made these changes and I can finally get into a game. Still crashes after 1min of gameplay… sad that I’m considering that progress. This is the worse launch I have ever experienced. Also I have the Battlenet version and that’s even more borked!
Update. Enabled Vsync and finally played a full game without crashing.

[VilzeR]

Originally posted by Silentium TikTok:

Originally posted by J1ocks2481:

[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Failed to match driver digest index (0).
[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Success launching "cod.exe -uid auks hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc"

ive tried everything and cannot get this fixed, i refunded the game and bought it on battle.net hoping for a fix but to no avail. at this point ive given up.

i bought on battlenet then steam. same issues. $170 for nothing

U can refund, u get that right.

[2000 Chevy S-10]

Originally posted by Silentium TikTok:

Originally posted by J1ocks2481:

[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Failed to match driver digest index (0).
[16744] 10/30/22 13:05:40: Success launching "cod.exe -uid auks hdeyguxs3zaumvlgvybm2vyc"

ive tried everything and cannot get this fixed, i refunded the game and bought it on battle.net hoping for a fix but to no avail. at this point ive given up.

i bought on battlenet then steam. same issues. $170 for nothing

Refund game. Put your faith in Jesus for salvation that He died and rose for our sins and be Saved. Jesus loves you.

[Joliro]

Originally posted by Dagger:

Made these changes and I can finally get into a game. Still crashes after 1min of gameplay, image I’m considering that progress. This is the worse launch I have ever experienced. Also I have the Battlenet version and that’s even more borked!
Update. Enabled Vsync and finally played a full game without crashing.

neat, glad you were able to find another option

[Idle_Input]

still cant start the game after doing "workarounds and fixing" like these you compiled here