A comprehensive guide on how to stop your game from crashing too much

After a fair amount of time searching the web for solutions, I have came up with a list of things that helped me through different hardware setups. This may not fix the issue 100%, but it will surely reduce the amount of times your game will crash.

Environment

I have been handling crash issues in Helldivers 2 since launch. There are a lot of stuff that is Arrowhead's responsibility for sure, but there are also a few things we can do on our side to tackle the problem (at least a little). Keep in mind that all steps presented here were collected from around the internet and although one of them might not cause any impact, maybe a combination of several different steps is able to solve or almost solve the crashes in your system.

It is important to notice that I have tested these steps in three different scenarios in the past months and they have worked in every case:

• Old setup (3rd Gen Intel CPU, DDR4 RAM, GTX 10 series GPU);
  
• Old setup with new GPU (Radeon 7900 XTX);
  
• New setup (12th Gen Intel CPU, DDR5 RAM, 7900 XTX).

Walkthrough

This guide will incorporate steps that need to be performed at three different levels: hardware, system and game. You can perform them in no particular order and my personal recommendation is that you do all of them regardless.

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Hardware

There are basically two things that you can do related to hardware that might help.

Disable XMP

The details on how to disable XMP will depend on your motherboard manufacturer and BIOS/UEFI version/model. You can easily find online guides on how to do that by including your motherboard model in your search. This is important speacially if you are facing blue screen crashes when playing Helldivers 2. This is safe since with XMP disabled your CPU will determine the maximum frequency your memory may work on to avoid any issues.

(For Intel CPUs only) Disable automatic optimization for CPU power delivery in your motherboard

I recommend you to watch this YouTube video beforehand to understand how this affects your CPU and why you should not let the manufacturer decide what is best. The video also briefily shows how you can do that. This is safe since with this option disabled CPU will enforce the power limits defined by Intel to avoid overloading it.

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System

This is specific for Windows. Keep in mind that I am using Windows 11, therefore some of these steps might be slightly different if you are using other releases.

(For Asus motherboards) Uninstall Asus Armoury Crate and AURA Control

Asus Armoury Crate and AURA Control are utility tools. You might have installed it on your own, but they are also "pre-loaded" in Asus motherboards to help installing drivers when you are installing a new Windows copy. They have a known memory leak issue that has not been solved yet and this can cause your game to crash due to high RAM usage. In fact this has also resolved crashes in other games like Remnant 2 and Enshrouded.

Uninstall any GPU Audio Driver you might have installed

There is a known compatibility issue related to Nvidia and AMD audio drivers with Helldivers 2. As this is usually the default option when installing/updating GPU drivers, most of us have them installed and don't even know or don't care because they are hardly useful. To uninstall them you may do the following:

1. Right-click Start menu and choose 'Device Manager';
   
2. Expand 'Sound, video and game controllers' and look for 'Studio Audio Mixer' (Nvidia) or 'AMD High Definition Audio' (AMD);
   
3. Right-click and choose Uninstall.

Note #1: if you use Nvidia or AMD voice technologies this might affect your ability to keep using them. Personally I think it is worth it, specially because there are other tools that can do that and will not crash your game.
Note #2: you might need to uninstall and then perform a clean install of your GPU drivers without the audio drivers. At least in my case AMD Adrenaline kept reinstalling it by itself until I did that.

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Steam/Game

These are all steps that you can perform directly from your Steam library or in-game Settings.

Run Helldivers 2 with DX11 instead of DX12

Helldivers 2 will run on DX12 by default and we know that DX12 is not the most stable API to run your games, specially if they are graphically demanding. In order to run Helldivers 2 in DX11 you may do the following:

1. Go to your Steam Library, right-click Helldivers 2 and go to Properties;
   
2. In 'General > Launch Options' input "--use-d3d11" without quotes and close the pop-up.

Your game will now be forced to run on DX11 instead of DX12. This will not only help with crashes but should also increase the performance a bit.

Run Helldivers 2 as an Administrator by default

This has specially helped me with game not opening or stuck in a black screen when starting:

1. Go to your Steam Library, right-click Helldivers 2 and go to Properties;
   
2. In 'Installation Files' choose the 'Browse...' button to open the game files;
   
3. Go to 'bin > helldivers2.exe', right-click it and choose 'More Options > Properties';
   
4. In Compatibility tab check the option 'Run this program as an administrator';
   
5. Choose Apply then OK to save your changes.

Disable Global Illumination in game settings

This made a huge difference to me. Apparently GI not only has a big impact on performance but also is not the most stable game setting since ever. You can also try to tweak other effects and see if it helps, but in my case only GI was a problem:

1. While in game hit ESC and go to 'Options > Graphics' and turn 'Screen-Space Global Illumination' off.

Conclusion

I hope this guide helps you reducing crash issues and allows you to enjoy the game a bit more. If you have any other hint leave a comment so people that land on this guide can also refer to it. Additionally, if I ever find any other step that is not currently in this guide I will try to update it ASAP.