Constant game freezing

[MaDDeviL]

Hello, fellas.

Was trying to launch this game on my 12th gen Intel and was getting constant game freezes.

I haven't seen this solution here yet, but that's what helped me:
Launch the game->Open windows' Task Manager->Go to Details tab->Find ZAT.exe process->Right mouse button on it->Choose Set affinity->Toggle on your first 8 CPUs (From CPU 0 to CPU 7) and toggle the rest off.

After that I managed to play 3 hours straight just fine.

TL;DR - Try to allocate your first 8 cores through task manager for this game.

[Nameless]

Don't know much about CPUs so I hope you don't mind me asking,
how tf does disabling CPU cores make a game work better?

[MaDDeviL]

Originally posted by Nameless 261:

Don't know much about CPUs so I hope you don't mind me asking,
how tf does disabling CPU cores make a game work better?

It makes it work cause they didn't optimize the old DRM, which doesn't interact with 12th gen well. So if you disable e-cores, it should start working. At least that was my case

[Soreyasu]

This works for me :D +1
Edit: Once alt tabbing out of the game, it breaks again for me so yeah haha :D

[MaDDeviL]

Originally posted by Yasu:

This works for me :D +1
Edit: Once alt tabbing out of the game, it breaks again for me so yeah haha :D

Yeah, actually there is a problem with alt-tabs even on my friends' PCs, that aren't intel 12th gen. You have to fully concetrate on the game :D

Glad that the solution helped you though

[Chachardus]

I found a solution to stop crashes on my PC (Intel 12th Gen i9-12900K 3.20 GHz, 64,0 Go RAM, Windows 11 Professional 22H2, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090Ti, Motherboard : AORUS Z690M Elite AX DDR4).
This issue seams related to E-Cores, so you need to desactivate them in BIOS :
-Reboot your PC and access to BIOS (DEL key for my PC)
- Search for "CPU Upgrade", and select "Gaming Profile (Disable E-Cores)" (this setting may be different on your PC depending on your BIOS version)
- Save and Exit.
Now, I can play more than 3 hours without a crash.
I tested other games with E-Cores desactivated (Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of us, Dying light 2, ...) and there are no issues.

[Gooba :3]

Unfortunately this doesn't completely work for me. I have intel i7-12700k. After turning off all the e-cores, the freezing problem was gone, but it turned into crashing to desktop several seconds loading into a map.

I have sent a ticket regarding this freezing issue to the support last year. In their last reply at the end of December they told me to send them my dxdiag log to them, and there has been no update since then... I guess they just don't give a fork and gave up this game and its player base.

[MaDDeviL]

Originally posted by Unyuho :3:

Unfortunately this doesn't completely work for me. I have intel i7-12700k. After turning off all the e-cores, the freezing problem was gone, but it turned into crashing to desktop several seconds loading into a map.

I have sent a ticket regarding this freezing issue to the support last year. In their last reply at the end of December they told me to send them my dxdiag log to them, and there has been no update since then... I guess they just don't give a fork and gave up this game and its player base.

Do you minimize the game? It causes the game to crash from my and my friends' experience.

[Gooba :3]

No, I opened the game, went to campaign and loaded a level, started shooting three or four zombies, and then crashed to desktop. Tried four times in a row, first two with fullscreen and the last two with windowed, all crashed to desktop seconds after map loaded.

[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.

[Soreyasu]

i actually just go to affinity and set it to just 4 cores and it works perfectly fine now.

[B1gD4ddy]

that's only applicable to games that at least start and run long enough.
wolfenstein 2009 for example doesn't give you enough time to do that affinity stuff in taskmanager.
for me and my 7950x3d the exe starts and you can observe in taskmanager that around 3 seconds later it's gone.
in this case you can only do it via bios or msconfig.

[Soreyasu]

Tbh we should not be needed to do these things and instead either devs, intel or microsoft should fix it (not sure who is responsible for this issue)

[B1gD4ddy]

that's true.
but devs and pubs don't care about games that are beyond their life cycle.

[Soreyasu]

Originally posted by B1gD4ddy:

that's true.
but devs and pubs don't care about games that are beyond their life cycle.

Sad but 100% truth.

[sackboi96]

Been trying all suggestions and no matter what it still crashes on 12900k.
Luck of the draw with these fixes it seems but it just really doesn't like newer hardware.

All these still cause crashing randomly:

• Disabled e cores on bios
  
• Set affinity to 4 cores... stutters like hell on top of crashing
  
• Reduce or change graphics..one by one -.-
  
• Give a frame limit
  
• Re download
  
• Give admin
  
• Run in both window and full screen
  
• Run in compatibility mode

Probably a few more but these are the main ones I tried.


But play the game on older 4790k pc with windows 11... flawless but that's now my partners pc for coop so not so helpful.
Alt tab is another issue on its own but it at least has a work around.