Temporary Fix for PoE 2 Freezing Your PC

[Waiden]

In the past 12 hours, I've had about 10 full PC freezes while in loading screen that required a hard reboot. I've tried several fixes, but I’ve finally come up with a ''workaround''.

By reducing the CPU cores assigned to Path of Exile (PoE) in Task Manager (set affinity)—cutting them by about half—I managed to stop the PC from completely freezing. Now, when the game crashes, only the game itself locks up. I just have to force close it and relaunch, avoiding a full system freeze.

I think this confirms that the issue is definitely CPU-related.

Here’s what my core utilization looked like when the game froze on the loading screen but not the entire PC: https://ibb.co/chSCPWJ

*You have to do this every single time you launch the game

[Tobi]

That looks like too much work for just playing the game

[Waiden]

Originally posted by Tobi:

That looks like too much work for just playing the game

I agree, what what else can I do if I want to play? POE 2 is a game I waited for years and I have no desire to play anything else.

[Icke]

Did the patch not fix it yet? I got the same issue.

[Teaf]

There's an issue going around for crashing in games for people who have an AMD CPU and are running Windows 24H2. You can find more details of the problem here[learn.microsoft.com], but it affects numerous games. For Path of Exile (1 and 2), it generally happens on loading screens.

You could try and use BES CPU Limiter[mion.yosei.fi] instead of disabling cores. You can reduce the maximum CPU usage that pathofexile.exe can use by around 5% so it cannot hit 100%, as that is what causes the freeze. Here's an example[i.imgur.com] of how to set it up, it's only -3% in that screenshot, but I'd recommend -5%.

1. Run Path of Exile 2 and stay at the login screen.
2. Launch BES CPU Limiter
3. Find pathofexile.exe, click on it, and press the Limit button.
4. Set the slider at the bottom to around -5%.
5. Return to the game and test/play.

BES should list Path of Exile as a "Foe", and it's name in the list should turn orange. Make sure the task bar icon is a red box. If it's a grey box, then BES isn't enabled.

Going that route instead of disabling cores will make the game run much better, as you're only losing 5%~ CPU potential, rather than up to 50% by disabling half your cores for PoE.

[Waiden]

Originally posted by Teaf:

There's an issue going around for crashing in games for people who have an AMD CPU and are running Windows 24H2. You can find more details of the problem here[learn.microsoft.com], but it affects numerous games. For Path of Exile (1 and 2), it generally happens on loading screens.

You could try and use BES CPU Limiter[mion.yosei.fi] instead of disabling cores. You can reduce the maximum CPU usage that pathofexile.exe can use by around 5% so it cannot hit 100%, as that is what causes the freeze. Here's an example[i.imgur.com] of how to set it up, it's only -3% in that screenshot, but I'd recommend -5%.

1. Run Path of Exile 2 and stay at the login screen.
2. Launch BES CPU Limiter
3. Find pathofexile.exe, click on it, and press the Limit button.
4. Set the slider at the bottom to around -5%.
5. Return to the game and test/play.

BES should list Path of Exile as a "Foe", and it's name in the list should turn orange. Make sure the task bar icon is a red box. If it's a grey box, then BES isn't enabled.

Going that route instead of disabling cores will make the game run much better, as you're only losing 5%~ CPU potential, rather than up to 50% by disabling half your cores for PoE.

Yes, this has helped me to prevent POE 2 loading screen freezes but I hope there will be some proper fix soon as this workaround lowers the FPS a little.

[Space Ctaclar]

So I'm trying to use BES and Path of Exile 2 isn't showing up as targetable. What am I doing wrong?

[HeruThema]

None of the proposed solutions has stopped the constant crashing. I played more that 150 hrs without any crashes.. About 10 days ago there were several updates over 2 days and my game started crashing. I have been on the latest Win 11 patch and the game ran without problems until the patches. They need to undo whatever they did to the game.
I have used BES without success.

This game went from a 9/10 to a 3/10.

[RAV]

Originally posted by Waiden:

Originally posted by Teaf:

There's an issue going around for crashing in games for people who have an AMD CPU and are running Windows 24H2. You can find more details of the problem here[learn.microsoft.com], but it affects numerous games. For Path of Exile (1 and 2), it generally happens on loading screens.

You could try and use BES CPU Limiter[mion.yosei.fi] instead of disabling cores. You can reduce the maximum CPU usage that pathofexile.exe can use by around 5% so it cannot hit 100%, as that is what causes the freeze. Here's an example[i.imgur.com] of how to set it up, it's only -3% in that screenshot, but I'd recommend -5%.

1. Run Path of Exile 2 and stay at the login screen.
2. Launch BES CPU Limiter
3. Find pathofexile.exe, click on it, and press the Limit button.
4. Set the slider at the bottom to around -5%.
5. Return to the game and test/play.

BES should list Path of Exile as a "Foe", and it's name in the list should turn orange. Make sure the task bar icon is a red box. If it's a grey box, then BES isn't enabled.

Going that route instead of disabling cores will make the game run much better, as you're only losing 5%~ CPU potential, rather than up to 50% by disabling half your cores for PoE.

Yes, this has helped me to prevent POE 2 loading screen freezes but I hope there will be some proper fix soon as this workaround lowers the FPS a little.

Just to clarify are you running 24H2? I'm on 23H2 and haven't had a single crash on my R5 7600X. If anyone is reading this and having this issue I recommend rolling back to 23H2 if possible as 24H2 seems to be absolutely plagued by issues such as this.