Hard crashing PC locks up

"

zidler#5760 wrote:

Throwing this observation into the pile:

My first session after rebooting my PC I can usually play for several hours without issue. If I close the game and re-open it without rebooting in-between, the crashes are extremely frequent.

This might be why so many people seem to think they fixed the problem after making some random change but then come back the next day with a "nevermind".

"

benjy3gg#0693 wrote:

My Rig:
7800x3d
4090
32GB RAM

was crashing before every 3rd or so loading screen.
Tried Process Lasso, Hard Setting SMT Disabled.
Vulkan instead of DX12

All of this made the problem better but i would still get occasional crashes now and then.

Only thing that helped was setting Engine Multithreading to False which results in much lower FPS.

BUT I might have found the cause (atleast on my system) and a solution for it:

I was looking at Task manager and i saw that the
Antimalware Service Executable (Windows Defender) had super high CPU Load during Loading Screens.
Upon further investigation with Resource Monitor, it was scanning the Shadercache Files on each loading screen.

I always set an Antimalware Exclusion for my Games for their Folder and also did this for POE2 before launch, but the "problem" is that they moved the shadercache files from the gamefolder to "C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Path of Exile 2\ShaderCacheD3D12" which is obviously not excluded from Windows Defender.

After adding the ShaderCacheD3D12 Folder to exclusions the loading never crashed since more than 8 hours now. I can set Engine Multithreading and DX12 back and it works perfectly.

If you wanna try it too:
1. Open Windows Security (From Startmenu)
2. Click on Virus&Thread Protection
3. Under "Virus & Thread Protection Settings" Click on "Manage Settings"
4. Scroll all the way down to "Exclusions" and click on "Add or Remove Exclusions"
5. Click on "Add Exclusion" and then "Folder" and navigate to the app data folder (easiest way is to click into the navbar in the top and then type "%appdata%" which is a shortcut to the appdata folder)
6. Scroll down to "Path of Exile 2" double click on the folder and then choose "Select Folder"

7. Optional: Add an exclusion for the Path of Exile 2 Game folder the same way