Game Constantly Crashes When Saving

[TR4GER]

I've made a discussion before about this issue but wanted to ask again since I've looked into the issue extensively. Every so often when I save the game, it crashes immediately to desktop. I have attempted to troubleshoot this problem and every time I think I have solved it after a few hours of playtime, I get another crash.

I first thought it had to be an anti-virus issue. I added just about every single exception that exists in Windows Defender for all of the game folders and .exe files. I also have all of the exe files to run as administrator. Even playing with all anti-virus (real time protection) off I still have the issue.

The problem is that the crash is difficult to recreate because it happens sometimes when saving - which has made it so I can't identify anything in common between each instance. Checking the windows event viewer says that the faulting application is the launcher.exe. The most frustrating thing that I notice is that while others report crashing I never see anyone report crashing exclusively on saves like for me. I've tried various other things such as disabling the steam overlay and cloud saves as well as changing around the graphics to no avail. Verifying the integrity of Steam game files always comes up empty.

Playing on Windows 11, maybe the issue is related to that. Specs below
i9-14900K
RTX 3080

Anyone else having this issue or can possibly offer insight? Could it just be unique to my system? This crash occurs seemingly no matter how many background apps I close.

[GIJoe597]

Last thread for reference;
https://steamcommunity.com/app/261550/discussions/17/604141771964818913/

[Fringillidae]

I had this issue as well. For me, it was an anti-virus issue. I use Malwarebytes, and disabling it while in game fixed my issue. From what I can tell, for some reason, Bannerlord's file write is flagged by security software. I'm on Windows 10, but some other threads said that Windows 11 Security has been the cause for their issues. I would look into that if I were you.

[TR4GER]

Originally posted by Fringillidae:

I had this issue as well. For me, it was an anti-virus issue. I use Malwarebytes, and disabling it while in game fixed my issue. From what I can tell, for some reason, Bannerlord's file write is flagged by security software. I'm on Windows 10, but some other threads said that Windows 11 Security has been the cause for their issues. I would look into that if I were you.

Thank you for the info. At first glance it definitely pointed to antivirus, but I feel like I've done all I can with the Windows antivirus. On top of adding exceptions to all game folders and .exe files in the Steam folder and to Steam.exe itself, since I did see a couple times where that exe in particular flagged an antivirus response, disabling every facet of Windows antivirus in the settings before I play doesn't seem to affect the issue.

[GIJoe597]

Did you try the last thing I suggested in the linked thread? That controlled folder access which is managed by the ransomware settings is what needs to be modified. If you have not tried it certainly no harm in giving it a shot.

[TR4GER]

Originally posted by GIJoe597:

Did you try the last thing I suggested in the linked thread? That controlled folder access which is managed by the ransomware settings is what needs to be modified. If you have not tried it certainly no harm in giving it a shot.

I appreciate the suggestion. I thought that had to be the culprit at first. Steam.exe as well as all of the .exe files associated with Bannerlord are in the "allow an app through" function there, but even still when troubleshooting this issue controlled folder access antivirus is off altogether anyways

[TR4GER]

Just putting this here in case anyone in the future happens to have a similar issue. Not sure why saving was triggering this crash to begin with, but nonetheless I have managed to definitively solve this problem.

Spent nearly a month troubleshooting this as I was seeing minor issues in other games too, so I started to suspect a hardware problem later on. My line of troubleshooting was:
Command prompt system file checker returned no errors
All game files validated
Reinstalled the games, making sure to completely remove all folders and directories
Updated display drivers
Antivirus exceptions added, even disabling thereof entirely
Monitored resources (temps, usage) all at normal levels
Ran games with admin privileges
Disabled fullscreen optimizations
Added manual configuration of paged memory, no luck
Trimmed SSD

At this point is when I started to suspect a hardware problem, especially since I was noticing some performance problems in other games I shouldn't be having. So then I -
Ran a boot to memtest86 - passed
Ran Intel processor diagnostic tool - passed

In the end what ended up solving this problem to where I not only experienced no further crashes at all in Bannerlord but also had greatly increased PC performance overall, was to flash the BIOS - I certainly wish I had done it sooner. Recommend doing so to anyone with a beefy PC and possibly an old BIOS.