wardogs crash guide

last updated 3 oct 2026

tldr

if your game freezes for about 20 seconds and then just closes, that's a bug in the game itself and there's no real fix yet. if it crashes because your pc ran out of memory, you can fix that yourself in 2 minutes (step 3).

been digging into these crashes for about 3 weeks with some of you. we went through almost 50 crashes from 10 different pcs, so this isn't guessing. here's how to find out which crash you have, what actually helps, and what's a waste of time.

step 1: find your crash dump

wardogs doesn't put its crash files where you'd expect. nothing in Saved/Crashes, no windows error report. it dumps them in your temp folder.

1. press Win + R, type %temp% and press enter
2. sort by date modified
3. look for a file like PACKER_730546_900.dmp (usually 2 to 12 MB). you get one per crash, and the last number is the game's process id
4. copy it somewhere safe, windows cleans the temp folder now and then

heads up before you post it: the dump contains your steam id (the game puts it in there on purpose), your windows username and your pc name. no passwords, no email, no ip address. if you don't want people finding your steam profile, dm it instead of posting it in public.

step 2: figure out which crash you have

there's not one wardogs crash, there's at least 5. most of the time you can tell from what happened on screen:

want to know for sure? install WinDbg (free, from the microsoft store or winget install Microsoft.WinDbg), open your dump with File → Open dump file, type .exr -1 in the command box and look at what it prints:

• ExceptionCode: 00008000 → the freeze crash
• runtime_...+0x0000000000000001 and Attempt to execute non-executable address → the launch crash
• runtime_...+0x0000000002b6e517 and Attempt to write to address 0000000000000018 → out of memory
• atmokyTrueSpatial+... → the audio crash

want the full analysis? type !analyze -v instead. the first time it takes 1 to 2 minutes (it downloads microsoft's symbol files) and it prints a lot, so scroll to the FAILURE_BUCKET_ID line:

• APPLICATION_FAULT_8000_WardogsClient-Win64-Shipping.exe!Unknown → the freeze crash. FAILURE_ID_HASH will be {9d270a92-128e-14a2-a826-642bbd7d489f}, the same on every pc we've checked
• SOFTWARE_NX_FAULT_INVALID_POINTER_EXECUTE_CODE_c0000005_runtime.dll!Unknown → the launch crash
• INVALID_POINTER_WRITE_c0000005_runtime.dll!Unknown → out of memory (WRITE_ADDRESS should say 0000000000000018)
• INVALID_POINTER_READ_c0000005_atmokyTrueSpatial.dll!Unknown → the audio crash
• anything else → something we haven't seen yet, send it over

or just send me the dump and i'll check it.

step 3: fix the out of memory crash

this is the one you can actually fix. windows can only hand out as much memory as your RAM + pagefile, and wardogs is hungry. on my pc the game alone hit 24 GB in a 3 hour session at 1440p, and the whole pc peaked at 44 GB. with 32 GB of RAM and a small pagefile you will run out.

set your pagefile:

1. Win + R → sysdm.cpl → enter
2. Advanced tab → Performance Settings → Advanced tab → Virtual memory Change
3. either tick Automatically manage paging file size, or pick an SSD with free space and set Custom size: initial 16384, maximum 65536
4. click Set, then OK, then reboot

don't use a small fixed size and don't turn it off. i had mine on 16 GB fixed and crashed after 23 minutes. one player's pagefile was only 80 MB.

close the heavy stuff before you play. browser with a ton of tabs, mod managers, other launchers. in my 23 minute crash, other apps were already using 27 GB before the game even started. next session i had about 19 GB in the background and it ran 3h15m.

how to tell it was memory: Event Viewer → Windows Logs → System → Filter Current Log → Event ID 2004 (low on virtual memory) around the time you crashed. if you send me your dump i can also see your RAM and pagefile size from it.

step 4: the freeze crash (no confirmed fix yet)

being honest, nobody has a real fix for this one. it's the game's own watchdog. it happens on nvidia and amd cards, windows 10 and 11, every driver version we've seen, and it was still there after the 30 sep patch. the devs have to fix it. nobody has tested the 2 oct hotfix yet.

what worked for me (maybe): after i swapped my gpu, the game recompiled all its shaders and my next session ran 3h15m without crashing. before that i always died somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours. could be the shader recompile, could be the new gpu, not sure yet. two other players still got the freeze right after a driver update (which also makes the game recompile), so don't get your hopes up too much. if you try it, tell us how long your sessions last after.

how to force a shader recompile:

1. close wardogs completely
2. Win + R → %LOCALAPPDATA%\Wardogs\Saved → enter
3. delete every file that starts with D3DDriverByteCodeBlob_ (they end in .ushaderprecache and are a few hundred MB each). that's the game's compiled shaders, one file per graphics card
4. don't touch Config (your settings), SaveGames, or Wardogs_PCD3D_SM6.upipelinecache (deleting that one just gives you more stutter)
5. optional, to fully copy what a new driver does: also empty %LOCALAPPDATA%\NVIDIA\DXCache (amd: %LOCALAPPDATA%\AMD\DxCache and DxcCache). other games use this cache too, so they'll recompile once
6. launch and let it finish compiling before you join a match. close other heavy stuff while it compiles

other stuff that can't hurt:

• the game leaks memory the longer it runs (2 to 7 GB per hour on my pc), and on my pc a faster leak meant an earlier crash. restarting the game between long sessions doesn't fix the bug, but you start fresh
• Boot into Safe Mode and run DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) and clear every file from the GPU that remains from old drivers. Then go to you GPU manufacturers website (AMD/NVIDIA/Intel) and download the standalone driver file
  How to find what GPU is installed - DROPDOWN
  

1. Right click the Windows Icon on the taskbar
2. Select Device Manager
3. Find Diplay Adaptors
4. Ignore AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics, the other display adaptor (e.g. RX 6800XT / RTX5070 Ti / Intel(R) B580)

DROPDOWNS HERE
AMD Graphics Card (dropdown):

1. Go to https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html
2. Scroll until the box "Search or Browse Drivers and Support by Product"
3. Select Graphics
4. Select your product family (for most people thats RX Series)
5. Select your GPU Generation (RX6800XT -> RX 6000 etc.)
6. Find the GPU Model -> Submit
7. Find the Operating system and download the Latest AMD Software Adrenalin Edition
8. Select either Driver-only or Full install of AMD Software

NVIDIA Graphics Card (Dropdown)

1. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/
2. Find the "Latest Driver Downloads" Section
3. Download the Latest Driver (617.14 at time of writing)
4. Run the Download and choose either Driver only or Driver+NVIDIA App (Reccomended)
   NOTE FOR GTX10-and-older
   

• Enter the details of GTX10 or your exact GPU into the manual driver search box and then download that, your GPU is End-of-Life and no longer recieves driver update

Intel Graphics Card (Dropdown)

1. Go to https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/discrete-gpus/arc/software/drivers.html
2. Download the Game On Drivers and install them
   Note: Latest is 32.0.101.9034 at time of writing

• send your dump to the devs and mention "0x8000 freeze, RHIInterruptThread". the more of these they get, the sooner it gets fixed

step 5: launch crash and audio crash

launch crash (game closes a few seconds after you start it): that's the game's protection layer, not your pc. one player got it 3 times in a row and the 4th launch worked, so just relaunch. it can also hit mid game but that's rare. the 0.1.2 patch said it fixed a "WD-L020" crash caused by a windows 11 update, but we still see this one on the newest build. if you get a popup with an error code like WD-L020, post it, that tells us if it's the same bug.

audio crash (dump blames atmokyTrueSpatial.dll, usually in the first few minutes): that's the game's 3D audio plugin reading memory it already freed. we've only seen it on one pc so far, but on two different builds. if the game has a spatial or 3D audio option, try turning it off (nobody has tested that yet). either way, report it to the devs with the dump.

stuff that does NOT help (save yourself the time)

all of these got suggested at some point and we checked them:

lowering settings and closing background apps does help with the out of memory crash though (step 3).

extra checks

is it actually your gpu driver? Event Viewer → Windows Logs → System → Filter Current Log → Event ID 4101. if you see these at the times you crashed, your gpu driver is resetting, and that's a different problem from everything above. for you the TdrDelay tweak is actually worth a try:

• in an admin terminal: reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers" /v TdrDelay /t REG_DWORD /d 10 /f, then reboot
• to undo it: reg delete "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers" /v TdrDelay /f

is your gpu throttling? (nvidia) after playing, open a terminal and run nvidia-smi -q -d PERFORMANCE. under "Clocks Event Reasons Counters", if SW Thermal Slowdown and HW Thermal Slowdown both say 0 us, your card hasn't throttled from heat since you booted.

want me to look at your crash? send me the PACKER dump from step 1, dm is fine. i'll keep this updated as we find more. newest game build when i wrote this: 25677108 (the 2 oct hotfix).