~PC Hard lockup/Crashing to desktop and how i'm making it work~

Hello all,

Whilst I understand there are countless threads on this as I along with thousands of others have been following religiously for any viable fixes and/or further updates from GGG.

I wanted to take this time and explain my situation (similar to many others)
What I've done to try and solve the issue and what is currently working for me as temporary healthy solution while we wait for those further updates/patches.

Problem 1
Since Day 1 of release I am one of who experiences (Hard pc crashing on load screens) and requires you to physically reset your entire PC.
-I've played around with nearly every graphics setting in-game. IE; Vulkan, multi-threading, low graphics etc etc
-Dialed back and updated gpu drivers
-Dialed back and updated windows version (24H2)
-Limited my cpu usage running third party programs
-Validated game files
-Re-installed & tried both steam and GGG client.
-Deleted shaders and reconfigured Nvidia settings to suit.
-Sent GGG admin support my DXdiag along with a similar explanation of issues.

Problem 2
33 hours prior to posting this. I started experiencing "game crashing to desktop" where the game has become completely unplayable in WASD or MOUSE. For example. I load into game "into my hideout" and virtually immediately crash to desktop. Interesting I have been testing this as the crash provides no errors in event viewer.
The unusual things I've found outside of the obvious.
If I load into a map almost immediately before the crash. I seem to be able to sustain playing the game for the map. Only when I load back to my hideout that I crash to desktop almost immediately.
It seems that my Archmage sorc is bugged and/or corrupted as I can play my merc with no "crashing to desktop" but the normal "hard pc crashing" still exists. I have played my merc since discovering this for approx. 3 hours.
I can create new characters and play flawlessly but the moment I login to my sorc. crash

Work-Around
The only viable solution I have found which I have tested and played with for countless hours now is Controller mode through Steam. I can have max setting on with dls and dlaa with Nvidia boost on while using my Xbox controller.
-No crashing to desktop reported
-No Hard pc lockups reported.

While in controller mode, It's like the entirety of the game is dialed back.
I noted when zoning or using atlas or stash that there is a second of automatic pause in the game that lets your cpu "catch up" effectively.
I turned lock mouse cursor to my main screen OFF for easy mobility of using third party programs on other screens.
Unfortunately, I cannot implement the same setting for my 3rd screen (my tv) for lounge gaming. My fps completely plummets to 5fps. Best I can get is 30fps while I can play virtually any other game via steam on my tv flawlessly.

I much prefer playing WASD but I hope this helps some people! I'd also love to hear what others are experiencing outside of the normal and what you've done to see better performance/results? Reminder to some that this is "early access" and POE1 was much the same for the first few seasons in terms of bugs and tedious performance issues.

If GGG are reading this, Please help. :D I can't help but feel that most of the "minority" of players experiencing this are some of your most loyal. Hence the commitment to finding every/any possible fix.
Importantly, Thank you GGG team for actively acknowledging/communicating that there are known issues and fixes are underway.

Ironically I updated my PC to the following specs in preparation for POE2 for better performance.
~My System info~
AMD Ryzen 7 7700 8-Core Processor 3.80 GHz
32.0 GB RAM
Windows 11 Home 64bit Version 24H2 10.0.26100
B650 Aorus Elite AX ICE Motherboard
Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070 GPU

~Useful articles worth mentioning~
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/24h2-pc-crashing-when-loading-games/067b805b-fe22-4920-8d3c-145effd3fa56
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3594260
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3594126

Finally a decent post that is both constructive and informative,kudos. I have seen too many posts that aren't very helpful and frankly it's kinda annoying.

Whilst I havent experienced the instant crashes to desktop that have crept up recently (except one instance where I was in a party yesterday), I have experienced the hard freezes, however this only started after I upgraded windows to 24H2. This seems to be a common theme.

I understand some users have advised that they are experiencing the issue on different versions of Windows but you can't deny that the most common denominator is 24H2.

"

Kreesla#6635 wrote:

Finally a decent post that is both constructive and informative,kudos. I have seen too many posts that aren't very helpful and frankly it's kinda annoying.

Whilst I havent experienced the instant crashes to desktop that have crept up recently (except one instance where I was in a party yesterday), I have experienced the hard freezes, however this only started after I upgraded windows to 24H2. This seems to be a common theme.

I understand some users have advised that they are experiencing the issue on different versions of Windows but you can't deny that the most common denominator is 24H2.

"Most common denominator of dying is being a female. Approximately 51% of the dead are females. Dying is mostly a female issue."