POE 2 Complete PC Freeze while loading screen

I think at this point I am also done with PoE2. I will also post a negative comment on steam about GGG has a massive and high risk bug, that can potentially damage your PC. This has been going on long enough and instead of nerfing builds, skills etc., GGG needs to focus their attention on crucial matters at hand.

1. Uninstall POE2 and if you have it POE1 as well.
2. Important... delete both POE1 and 2 folders from your Documents/ My Games folder.
3. Do a search on your drive(s) for anything "Path of Exile", highlight all results and delete the files and folders then do the same search for "Grinding Gears" just in case there's any remnants that may be there. Then, empty your recycle bin!
4. Clean your shader cache... empty that sucker.
5. Rerun a scan in Nvidia App and make certain Path of exile is gone from your installed games.
6. Restart windows.
7. Do a fresh install of POE2 only (don't install POE1)
8. Start the game and redo your settings to taste. I left it on DX12 to really test it without Vulkan. Then exit the game and then restart it.
9. Ready to play... load in and hold your breath.

This worked perfectly in my 24H2 environment.
Perhaps, but the shader cache in PoE1 is causing the problem, which could be solved by removing it completely.

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Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

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Greenboots#0648 wrote:

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That's quite messed up. What parts did you have to replace?

Even with a sustained 100% load, there should be thermal protections everywhere, first for throttling (reducing performance), and forced shutdown in the worst case.

It's not healthy for the hardware in the long run, of course, but it's not something that happens in days (I have burned a GPU after 5 months on 100% load once, fluid dynamics work stuff).

Thankfully the graphics card was fine. It was the PSU that burned out, and there were knock-on effects of that (the motherboard stopped being able to run/register about half the fans in the case for example). It was easier to RTB the whole system and get it repaired by a professional than try to fix it myself.

I have a hard time believing that. The game crashes and hogs all the system resources, sure- your OS stops responding because no resources are left. However, you don't randomly draw more power, much less from the wall. Every halfway decent PSU even has safety measures on top and can sustain spiked loads beyond their actual rating for quite some time. If something was wrong with your PSU that's another story but PoE 2, even with the current bugs accounted for, doesn't burn your PSU or pops capacitors.

A hard crash and an incomplete shutdown process can burn your PSU. The probability is low but it is there. It is not the spike(well "most probably" not) that does the damage but rather the crash and incomplete shutdown process. I have explained this multiple times in this thread.

A PSU brick is actually a rarer condition, and is often the motherboard that gets bricked due to capacitor failure.

Even the best device can only guarantee lower chances of failure and not a full immunity.

Furthermore, I ask anyone who sees this message to please give a negative review for Path of Exile 2 on Steam.

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Shatraugh#5113 wrote:

Made a new character today after changing some windows settings and made it to the A2 caravan so far without a single freeze. I used to have total system freeze every few zones.

What i did was disabled all Windows graphics settings. and also from power usage plan settings i switched to the balanced setting and from Advanced settings i set CPU maximum power usage to 95%.

I suspect that games etc that use alot of CPU cause the freezes when certain windows setting are applied.

TLDR;
Disable windows graphic settings.
Switch power plan to balanced.
advanced power setting set CPU max power usage to 95%

for anyone that cares this worked for me. my steps to fix this:
~all settings in poe to middle/low
~disable core 0 and 1 in affinity ( everytime you start the game )
~disable the windows graphic settings ( there is 3 options disable all 3 and restart pc )
~change my power plan to the recommended one
~change cpu maximum power usage to 99% ( it says 95 % in pinned comment but for me 99 worked too )

my performance improved ( stable good fps now ), zones load 5 times as fast

and if it ever still happens to freeze it will just freeze the game not the whole pc. ( and with a trick i found out you can stop the freeze ) you enter to priority and change it to realtime.

the game will now unfreeze and you can continue to play but disable realtime again after it finished loading your zone.

that works for me. good luck bois n gurls.

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Cainrith#2807 wrote:

A hard crash and an incomplete shutdown process can burn your PSU. The probability is low but it is there.

No lol. It literally can not. Your PSU doesn't care whether or not your OS crashes, neither does it care if you hold down the power button, flip the switch on the PSU itself or pull it off the wall. For all intents and purposes your PSU doesn't even care whether or not your CPU, MB, GPU or RAM responds - safety mechanisms are independent of whatever software fuckups happen. It's physics, electricity isn't something magical or unknown.

Source: I literally work for be quiet! since 2009, a very reputable manufacturer for high quality PSU units.

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Shatraugh#5113 wrote:

Made a new character today after changing some windows settings and made it to the A2 caravan so far without a single freeze. I used to have total system freeze every few zones.

What i did was disabled all Windows graphics settings. and also from power usage plan settings i switched to the balanced setting and from Advanced settings i set CPU maximum power usage to 95%.

I suspect that games etc that use alot of CPU cause the freezes when certain windows setting are applied.

TLDR;
Disable windows graphic settings.
Switch power plan to balanced.
advanced power setting set CPU max power usage to 95%

Don't wanna sound too optimistic, but it seems that post above solved my game crushing problem (thanks!). Have 24H2 Windows version, for the last 2 weeks the game was barely playable. These three setting as described above helped. Worth mentioning thou, that I never experienced whole system freeze, but client crashes only in typical situations (zone change, skill tree opening, switching between characters).

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Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

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Cainrith#2807 wrote:

A hard crash and an incomplete shutdown process can burn your PSU. The probability is low but it is there.

No lol. It literally can not. Your PSU doesn't care whether or not your OS crashes, neither does it care if you hold down the power button, flip the switch on the PSU itself or pull it off the wall. For all intents and purposes your PSU doesn't even care whether or not your CPU, MB, GPU or RAM responds - safety mechanisms are independent of whatever software fuckups happen. It's physics, electricity isn't something magical or unknown.

Source: I literally work for be quiet! since 2009, a very reputable manufacturer for high quality PSU units.

Eheh Ulsarek, it's impossible to win, Cainrith knows more than hardware manufacturers and kernel programmers! That guy is on a weird crusade against GGG, probably out of frustration that he can't play.

If there's a C/C++ programmer who can reproduce the bug on his machine and is willing to help, I'm pretty sure we can nail a solution in a few hours with a proxy DLL serializing specific Vulkan calls related to buffer mapping/copy. Or perhaps shader compilation, we can figure out what solves the problem.

I sure would like to help the people stuck on this problem. Not Cainrith though, that guy is just annoying.

Rolled back my last windows update and it hasnt crashed on load screen for 3 days. Maybe 12 hours of gameplay in 3 sessions. This may not work for everyone but it worked for me.

I also deleted my config file and went with the default graphic settings for my pc.

the game worked fine before the update - Started crashing after the update. Now it works again with update uninstalled.

PC:
7800 X3D
RTX 4070ti super

32 gb ram.

this is a new computer it was fully updated everythin except for the most recent windows cumulative update.

As Basic as it sounds this solution (from this thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3645763) worked for me:

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Huginn#2767 wrote:

Since yesterday I haven't had crashes after I changed an option under advanced power management to put maximum cpu overload to 90%, where it used to be at 100%.
In English, it should be stated as 'processor power management' > 'maximum performance' > 90%

I had to disable process lasso cause it overrides this setting, but I've been playing without a hitch since. I kept the minimum at 100% and set max to 95%
go to : Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings

click change advanced power settings and you'll find the setting.

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Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

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Cainrith#2807 wrote:

A hard crash and an incomplete shutdown process can burn your PSU. The probability is low but it is there.

No lol. It literally can not. Your PSU doesn't care whether or not your OS crashes, neither does it care if you hold down the power button, flip the switch on the PSU itself or pull it off the wall. For all intents and purposes your PSU doesn't even care whether or not your CPU, MB, GPU or RAM responds - safety mechanisms are independent of whatever software fuckups happen. It's physics, electricity isn't something magical or unknown.

Source: I literally work for be quiet! since 2009, a very reputable manufacturer for high quality PSU units.

So residual currents and capacitor discharge magically go away?

Voltage spikes and transient voltage do not do damage?

Improper load disconnections do not cause any damage?

There is no chance of switching circuit malfunctions?

You are confusing low probability with improbability.

Source: Basic knowledge of electrical and computer engineering.

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StragusPoE#7529 wrote:

Eheh Ulsarek, it's impossible to win, Cainrith knows more than hardware manufacturers and kernel programmers! That guy is on a weird crusade against GGG, probably out of frustration that he can't play.

If there's a C/C++ programmer who can reproduce the bug on his machine and is willing to help, I'm pretty sure we can nail a solution in a few hours with a proxy DLL serializing specific Vulkan calls related to buffer mapping/copy. Or perhaps shader compilation, we can figure out what solves the problem.

I sure would like to help the people stuck on this problem. Not Cainrith though, that guy is just annoying.

There is already a program that circumvents this issue. It is called PoEUncrasher. It works.

My problem with GGG is that they are non-communicative on a very serious issue. And I do not like people downplaying the possibility of component damage or reduced component lifespan because when they happen someone is going to have a really bad time.

I really do not like how GGG does not even put a single warning comment.

I really do not like how GGG censored "Thank you" to PoEUncrasher's creator due to "targeted mentions" but leaves your "Cainrith is annoying" untouched. Imho that also shouldn't be removed, it is your right to speak about your thoughts about me or anyone else as long as it is civil. But someone took time that they could have taken for a simple announcement post, and instead removed that thank you sentence. This is extremely petty and unprofessional.

Again, I do not think GGG should be solving this issue immediately. I simply ask them to acknowledge its existence beyond a simple blame-shifting sentence on a post. Even a simple paragraph at the top of the patch notes would suffice: "We are working on it. We eliminated these as potential sources. We are focusing on these. Estimated time of fix is t. (Insert Apology)."

Furthermore, I ask anyone who sees this message to please give a negative review for Path of Exile 2 on Steam.