GAME INFORMATION
These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.
- GAME BUILD #: 101.103.48086 (179158) 23767045
- GAME PLATFORM: Steam
- OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11
ISSUE EXPERIENCED
Game crashing 3-4mins after launching through steam. Whether in-game or sitting on the home screen, the game crashes, without any error prompt. Issue started 4 hours ago (24/6/26 18:00 AEDT), and has happened for ~15 consecutive launches. This issue was not happening yesterday when i was playing. No other games on steam are encountering this issue for me.
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST !
- 100% of the time (ALWAYS)
REPRODUCTION STEPS
List CLEAR and DETAILED STEPS we can take to reproduce the issue ourselves… Be descriptiv e!
Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:
-
launch the game
-
wait 3-4 minutes for crash
EXPECTED RESULT
game would not crash
IMAGE
NA
GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)
NA
I am having the exact same issues. Around 3 min marker, same thing. Sometimes it will say disconnected from internet, then a few seconds later it will force close with no indication. I have tried to fix it with nearly every method.
I have rolled back old graphics drivers, checked integrity of files, uninstalled the game entirely as well as all data associated with it, etc. Nothing has fixed it. I am assuming at this point it is something on their end affecting only a few players considering you and I are the first to mention it.
I’ve not had it say disconnected from internet - and my internet never drops during the crash. Task manager also doesn’t show any kind of memory or cpu/gpu spike.
I’ve also tried all the fixes you mentioned - hard reset of my pc. Reinstall game. Check game integrity files etc. to no avail.
Yeah my internet is always fine when it happens, it’s just the message I receive whenever it is about to force close. I sent them an email with all of the details. They should respond in around 48 hours or so. This is a server side issue more than likely, which can affect very few players or many. Unfortunately, nothing can be done until they fix it on their end, but at least we are bringing it to their attention.
Game worked great for me last night, then today it kept doing this. I did not change a thing prior. No updates or GPU updates, it just randomly started. Has to be from their servers.
Exactly the same issue, no error message, nothing. Sometimes in the menu, sometimes in-game, it does not care; when it wishes to crash, it just does. Wonder if it’s related to a similar issue that occurred a few days ago on PCs with multiple GPUs. Integrated or otherwise.
Even when I’m watching the replay
Exact same issue here. Hadnt played a few days and had no issues before.
I do play on a Laptop with an integrated and a dedicated graphics card aswell.
We are investigating reports of players experiencing crashes a few minutes after launching the game across multiple Age of Empires titles. We’re actively working on it and will share updates as soon as we have more information.
There are steps that have worked for some players to resolve the issue including disabling run as an administrator in the game properties and launching the game directly from Steam.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition Known Issues & Solutions – Age of Empires Support
That’s really strange because I started having EXACTLY the same problems, but in AoE4, not AoR2.
I never had crashing issues before, but since yesterday—also at 6 PM (though for me that’s GMT-3, meaning 8 hours after you but at the same local time)—the game crashes 100% of the time about 3–4 minutes after starting, whether online or offline, with a sudden loss of connection right before the application closes.
Please fix this problem, it’s very annoying, I lost 5 games in a row, that’s the problem
UPDATE: Mine now works after disabling “run as administrator”. I am actually on Age of Empires 4, did not realize you were on AOE2 but the same issue was affecting multiple AOE titles. That’s what fixed my issue, hopefully it will for you and anyone else that reads this too. Mine was programmed to always run as admin through steam settings / properties of the game file (reliccard.exe)
exactly same issue. Log in Event Viewer：
-
-
1001
0
4
0
0
0x8000000000000000
92925
Application
DESKTOP-7I6HP6J
-
0
LiveKernelEvent
不可用
0
117
ffff8f8e619ca050
fffff80333a1f9b0
0
0
10_0_26200
0_0
768_1
\\?\C:\WINDOWS\LiveKernelReports\WATCHDOG\WATCHDOG-20260106-2138.dmp \\?\C:\WINDOWS\SystemTemp\WER-1910859453-0.sysdata.xml \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER.f4707dce-0af3-4742-8c47-b8aa5f51c201.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER.7629bc5a-f0e4-40f9-ac22-5cb62cb5221c.tmp.csv \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER.8465287c-dea9-4198-9319-dd40f3e7199e.tmp.txt \\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER.db98376b-23e9-4ebe-8783-d9c4a3456ff1.tmp.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\Kernel_117_697ff0b2f9965da5d2329e75d88e231c9dabab6_00000000_6c22c8bb-5f54-448e-8983-ab376b217c39
0
6c22c8bb-5f54-448e-8983-ab376b217c39
2049
0
Issue only occurs after latest game update, no hardware/driver changes. Same GPU (RTX 5060) & driver 610.62 works perfectly fine on previous game build, idle no crash at all. After updating to current game version, the game closes automatically after several minutes idle. Event Viewer logs LiveKernelEvent P8=768_1 with WATCHDOG.dmp, GPU TDR timeout error. I’ve applied all graphics compatibility tweaks: -d3d11only -windowed -novsync -nohtml, disabled all NVIDIA enhancements, extended TDR timeout via registry, problem still reproduces 100%.
Make sure your game is not running AOE as “administrator”. I had to turn my off and that’s what finally fixed it. Nothing else worked.
I’m sure that is diabled. It doesn’t work for me.
After 1 normal single-player game, it auto-closed again 11.
Further infomation: patches after June will auto-quit start from 2nd launch, which means switching between patchs can fix the problem once.
Root cause confirmed via repeated tests: Corrupted incremental shader cache inside NVIDIA DXCache folder triggers consistent TDR crash after ~4 minutes.
- Deleting all files under
%localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache fully resolves the idle crash temporarily;
- Rebooting PC without clearing DXCache does nothing to fix the issue, crash reproduces every subsequent launch;
- Switching back to older game build purges incompatible shader cache automatically, same stable result as manual DXCache deletion;
Crash Report: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (c0000005) on AoE2DE Latest Live Branches
Core Issue
The game crashes randomly with error code c0000005 (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION) during standard multiplayer matches, replay viewing and main menu idle. Right after this app crash, a secondary LiveKernelEvent 117 (768_1 GPU watchdog timeout) is logged automatically, which is only a side effect caused by abrupt process termination without proper DX11 resource cleanup, not the root crash trigger.
Build & Environment Info
- Game executable:
AoE2DE_s.exe
- Affected build version:
101.103.48987.0(#180059)
- Affected branches: Default and previous_live (both contain this memory violation bug)
- GPU: RTX 50-series, latest NVIDIA driver
- Shader cache: Fully disabled globally via NVIDIA Control Panel, no new DXCache files generated after reboot
- TdrDelay registry key modified to extended timeout value, no improvement on the c0000005 crash
- All in-game graphics settings lowered to minimum, no mods or custom maps loaded
Observed Reproduction Pattern
- Switching between the two faulty live branches temporarily stabilizes the game on the first launch: it can run for a much longer play session before crashing.
- Without switching branches, repeated game launches trigger the c0000005 crash far faster.
- This temporary stability only lasts for one session after branch switch, as the underlying flawed memory handling logic remains unchanged across both live branches.
- Wiping shader cache manually via PowerShell script does not replicate the full stability gain of switching branches, proving the crash is unrelated to disk shader cache fragmentation.
Troubleshooting Steps Already Performed (No Fix for c0000005)
- Fully disabled NVIDIA shader cache to eliminate compiled PSO fragment accumulation
- Tuned all NVIDIA 3D program settings to minimize DX11 render workload
- Extended GPU TDR timeout via Windows Registry
- Disabled Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS)
- Set all in-game graphics options to lowest possible values
- Verified full game file integrity via Steam
- Tested windowed and exclusive fullscreen launch modes
- Launched game with minimal startup argument
-d3d11only (removed extra window/html parameters)
- Disabled all overlays (GeForce Experience, Xbox Game Bar, OBS)
- Cleared local game profile and save cache documents
Conclusion
The root cause is an unrepaired memory access violation bug within the game’s DX11 render pipeline logic, present in both current live branches. All graphics driver, cache and system-level tweaks only mitigate secondary GPU queue overflow issues and cannot resolve the native EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION crash. Temporary stability after branch switching only delays the crash by resetting runtime memory state, but does not eliminate the underlying faulty memory operation code path.