Game Not Responding When Trying to Load Into Town

Hello, everyone.

I apologize if this issue has been covered elsewhere.

To start with some useful information: my laptop is a 6-core, 64 bit, 32 gig gaming PC with Windows 10 and a stable internet connection.

I have had zero issues running PoE smoothly with minimal lag for quite a long while now, probably over a year from my first (now deleted) character.

Last night, out of nowhere, the game goes unresponsive when trying to load into town after the character selection screen. I was playing just fine for the first part of the evening, and I have never had this issue before.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game, and on the first go, everything went fine. On the next go, same issue - goes unresponsive when trying to load into town.

Any ideas on a cause and a fix?

Update: I'm back in the game now, but no guarantees this won't happen again, and after loading into town, there was some lag that's not normally present. Gameplay is currently fine. But any helpful information is greatly appreciated!

I have been experiencing exact same. i can open game, log in but the minute i click on play, the 2 small wheels at the bottomn of the screenb lock ansd nothing happens. I open the POE game and clock on repair. That usually helps like maybe one time< I deleted software and re-loaded and that worked for a day. today, I tried playing and frozen screen time.