Game unresponsive on exit

zharkovian · September 2022

Since the last patch I have found the game seems to have a 25% chance of going unresponsive on the exit screen, this is via direct ESO and Steam ESO. The program needs to be force closed. Irritating little bug.

ZOS_Bill · October 2022

@zharkovian

The thread linked below has some troubleshooting you can start with to troubleshoot this crashing issue.

ESO stops working, have to use task manager to close

tonyblack · October 2022

Same happening to me as well, starting from september, i believe (wasn't the case for several years playing with no changes on my part as i barely used pc for anything else in recent months). Everytime I exit the game, it stops responding and i have to use task manager to close it.

Doc45 · October 2022

The same has been happening to me the last 2-3 days (N/A Server), and it puts up a screen that looks like it's rolled back (ex: do a pledge, go to house, decon, go to sign out, and screen flashes back to the pledge dungeon). It doesn't seem to actually roll back any progress at all, but the window won't close, and trying to close Steam won't force the exit.

SpellSlingerTaz · November 2022

Happening to me also after latest patch. PC/NA/Win11
EDIT: After a couple of game launch cycles, this fixed itself. No Windows, game or other updates. But, working again is good.

DrScott59 · November 2022

Deleting the cache files fixed this problem for me. Exit is still "slow" (5-15 seconds on fast machine), but it does consistently exit now without having to kill the process.

1. Exit ESO.
2. Delete the ESO shader cache file ( ..\eso\live\shadercache.cooked ).
3. Delete ALL files within the Nvidia cache folder (%localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache\ ).
4. Restart ESO. The above files will be automatically rebuilt.

ZOS_Bill · November 2022

As posted here, this is a known issue with Windows 7, related to necessary security settings in ESO. As a result of maintaining these security setting to protect players, this issue will continue to persist with ESO on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future. We understand the Explorer.exe issue is frustrating for ESO Players on Windows 7. However, it is paramount that we keep these security settings enabled in order to ensure a safe experience for all ESO players.

DrScott59 · November 2022

@ZOS_Bill - The problem the OP described (and to which my response applies) is NOT related to the explorer/win7 desktop reset to which you linked.

The issue discussed in this thread is entirely different, described as indefinite hanging of eso64.exe on exit until force closed. In my experience, it is related to corrupt shader/cache files, and it happens on Win10 & Win11 as well. It did not begin with the current patch, but could very well have occurred for the OP concurrent with this patch do to the crashes (NodeDetection and Hide Followers) in this release causing a corrupt cache.