The game keeps freezing

[Slayrix]

The game will lock up entirely and then I have to force close it through task manager, can't even play for 10 minutes straight.

I have an rtx 3070 and and intel i7-12700K

Have tried playing on low settings, tried locking fps, tried validating files, tried everything I can think of to do. Please help

[LazärheaD]

I guess most people can still run it. Judging by the reviews. Maybe only AMD users. Unfortunate, we may never get a patch.

[gamersolidwolf]

EDIT: I still have the same problem, so the following solution may work for some and for some it may not.

As another person mentioned, the problem is the E-Cores of the CPUs above the 12th generation of Intel. The best fix for this is using Process Lasso, an alternative task manager that, unlike the windows task manager, saves the preferences of the user related to the CPU cores after rebooting.

To fix it, just download Process Lasso from the official website and install it. Once done, open it and open the game. While the game is on the main menu alt-tab and select its process from the "Active Processes" tab. After that right-click it and select "Efficiency Mode > Always > Off".

It seems that this may not fix the problem because some apps are fixated to the E-Cores anyways. For this reason it is necessary to right-click again and select "CPU Affinity > Always > Select" and disable all the cores that have an "E" in their name.

After this, the game should work properly. You must leave "Process Lasso" open every time you want to play the game.

The reason for this problem is really upsetting: These E-Cores don't seem to be recognized by the DRM of some "old" games. If this game didn't have DRM, this issue wouldn't exist in the first place. The developers know how to fix the problem and they still don't do it so they can continue "preventing" the piracy of their game at the expenses of the players. We all know that this game was cracked a long time ago and that leaving that DRM is completely pointless. That being said, this fix can work for many other games which have the same issue.

It seems that this crashing can also be solved by enabling "Legacy Compatibility Mode" on the BIOS. This didn't work for me since my "Insyde H20 BIOS" interface is a piece of trash, so I had to find another solution.

[B1gD4ddy]

yes, you're right buddy.
it doesn't have anything to do with graphics settings or any other senseless ideas.
on the intel side it's the e cores hated by the drm system.
on the amd side it's most likely cpus consisting of multiple core complexes aka ccds.
because as soon as i limit my 7950x3d from 16 cores to 8 cores, aka disable the second ccd, the game stops freezing.
and instead of fixing this massive problem they just announced a new vr only zombie game nobody asked for.

[Nei]

Originally posted by B1gD4ddy:

if you don't want to use the bios, you can also do it via msconfig like i already said.

maybe affinity via taskmanager also works.
haven't tried this.

otherwise simply don't play the game.
imagine being mad despite having 2 perfectly working solutions to your problem, just because it takes a minute or 2 to enable them.

your solution simply sucks

[B1gD4ddy]

it's more like a workaround.
not a solution.
stay mad kid.

[Nei]

Originally posted by B1gD4ddy:

it's more like a workaround.
not a solution.
stay mad kid.

you put so much energy into being angry and then telling me to stay mad lmao
look at the mirror first

[gamersolidwolf]

An update: My game is still freezing after 15 minutes or so with the fix I posted. Has anyone else found a better solution? I'm planning on using "Park Control" as the site of Process Lasso suggests, but I don't want to change the default thread schedulling for the rest of my processes. I don't know if that's what happens anyways.

[B1gD4ddy]

try disabling cores via msconfig or bios.
works perfectly for my 7950x3d as i described above.

[gamersolidwolf]

It worked!!! I played for 4 straight hours without any problems. For those who don't know just write "msconfig" on the Windows search bar and select the app. Then, select the "Boot" tab and click on "Advanced Options". After that, toggle the "Number of Processors" box and select the processors that are not efficient cores. In my case they were 16. Restart your computer and it should be solved. It seems that the fact of only being disabled for some processes won't work, so this may be your solution.

To get back to normal just repeat the same process and untoggle the "Number of Processors" box and restart.

Thank you!

[ThatDeafDude]

Originally posted by gamersolidwolf:

It worked!!! I played for 4 straight hours without any problems. For those who don't know just write "msconfig" on the Windows search bar and select the app. Then, select the "Boot" tab and click on "Advanced Options". After that, toggle the "Number of Processors" box and select the processors that are not efficient cores. In my case they were 16. Restart your computer and it should be solved. It seems that the fact of only being disabled for some processes won't work, so this may be your solution.

To get back to normal just repeat the same process and untoggle the "Number of Processors" box and restart.

Thank you!

That's actually bad advice, because non-efficient cores can be located under different numbers. I've seen advice to turn off first 16 cores - I did and miracle didn't happen. After that I used Process Lasso, as was suggested earlier and realised that my non-efficient cores are last 16.
So, Process Lasso is your best bet. Even more, you can set presets for just process that needed and leave program running without need of rebooting and making all of your system work on efficient cores only. Even more x2 - this app remembers your choices, so you don't have to make changes every time you launch the game.

[gamersolidwolf]

As I mentioned: "In my case they were 16". Process Lasso helped me to discover which cores were Efficient and which were not. Other than that, it didn't do almost anything to help me play the game.

Somehow, ZAT.exe used the Efficient Cores from one moment to another even though they were disabled in Process Lasso and that I toggled off the efficiency for it.

[Guy of Gisborne]

Originally posted by B1gD4ddy:

the freezing comes from this stoneage game hating high core count cpus.
limit your cpu to 8 cores or less via bios or msconfig and it works.
same goes for wolfenstein 2009.
tested it with my 16 core 7950x3d.

btw you can remove the 60fps cap by simply adding -hz=xxx to the steam start options of the game.
xxx has to be replaced with your monitor's refresh rate.

Yep. I have a 13600K and I limited my cores to 8 via msconfig and I was finally able to get past a checkpoint I was stuck on.
The only inconvenience is having to reboot your PC after making a change, but reboots don't take very long these days.

[BattleCat]

This is sad, I'm coming back to this game after a while I really miss playing it but I can only play for a few minutes before it freezes. I have noticed for me the freeze always happens while I'm using the sniper scope to zoom in

[BattleCat]

Edit: NVM guys although this lasted a longer while the game still froze.

Hey guys I found something that seems to do the trick. If you are using a 12th gen intel CPU or above and the game is freezing, it seems to be due to the separate groups of efficiency and power cores, AKA e-core / p-core. To get the game to run like it would on a normal CPU, you need to stop it from using the e-cores.

1. Find out what number of each core type your CPU has. You can google the CPU model, in my case i7 12700h. the first links should take you to the official intel page for your intel CPU with the info for the CPU. So mine has 6 p-cores and 8 e-cores. Now, p-cores are multi threaded which is important. so 6 x 2 = 12 threads.

2. Have task manager open and go to "details" section. Open the game, hit play on the launcher with whatever graphics settings. Now the actual game process will run. Alt Tab to your task manager and find "ZAT.exe" in details section.

3. Now right click on ZAT.exe and click "Set affinity" on context menu. This will allow you to choose which CPU threads are allowed for the game to use. Now, e-cores will count as a single thread, where as the p-cores will count as two "CPU" numbers. The p-cores will be on the top of the list, finally ending with the e-cores. Meaning, to select your first p-core completely, you must have both "CPU 0" and "CPU 1" ticked off. Scroll to the top of the list, un-tick "All Processors", then count your p-core threads as you tick off every two CPUs. In my case I have 6 p-cores, 12 threads so I tick all CPUs from "CPU 0" to "CPU 11". We're starting from 0 so to have 12 it goes to 11.

Once you're done click OK and Alt Tab back into the game. Hopefully it works!

[Guy of Gisborne]

Originally posted by VRAM Full:

Edit: NVM guys although this lasted a longer while the game still froze.

Hey guys I found something that seems to do the trick. If you are using a 12th gen intel CPU or above and the game is freezing, it seems to be due to the separate groups of efficiency and power cores, AKA e-core / p-core. To get the game to run like it would on a normal CPU, you need to stop it from using the e-cores.

1. Find out what number of each core type your CPU has. You can google the CPU model, in my case i7 12700h. the first links should take you to the official intel page for your intel CPU with the info for the CPU. So mine has 6 p-cores and 8 e-cores. Now, p-cores are multi threaded which is important. so 6 x 2 = 12 threads.

2. Have task manager open and go to "details" section. Open the game, hit play on the launcher with whatever graphics settings. Now the actual game process will run. Alt Tab to your task manager and find "ZAT.exe" in details section.

3. Now right click on ZAT.exe and click "Set affinity" on context menu. This will allow you to choose which CPU threads are allowed for the game to use. Now, e-cores will count as a single thread, where as the p-cores will count as two "CPU" numbers. The p-cores will be on the top of the list, finally ending with the e-cores. Meaning, to select your first p-core completely, you must have both "CPU 0" and "CPU 1" ticked off. Scroll to the top of the list, un-tick "All Processors", then count your p-core threads as you tick off every two CPUs. In my case I have 6 p-cores, 12 threads so I tick all CPUs from "CPU 0" to "CPU 11". We're starting from 0 so to have 12 it goes to 11.

Once you're done click OK and Alt Tab back into the game. Hopefully it works!

tbh that's a lot more complicated than the msconfig solution. Just use msconfig and limit the cores to 8. This will actually limit you to 4, but each one is recognized as 2. A reboot is required after. When you've finished playing, open msconfig and remove the core limit and reboot again, and then you can play a non-broken game.

Also, alt+tabbing is not possible for everyone. I can't do it at all when playing this game.