Crashes more often recently?

Mayrael · September 2025

I hopped onto Gray Host on PC EU for some quick fun, but during my first fight, the game crashed—no errors, no lag, just a flash and I’m staring at my desktop. I logged back in, respawned, and went to defend a castle again, but within seconds of the next fight, it crashed again in under five minutes. At that point, I was done. Anyone else having this issue, or is it just me?

Panthermic · September 2025

It's not just you. Since the latest patch, my game has crashed to the desktop, just like yours. Another time, when I tried to go to character select, the game's window turned white, and the question appeared after a few seconds: close it or wait longer for a response. Of course, I had to close it without any hope of getting it back. It happened on PC NA if that makes any difference.

manukartofanu · October 2025

Yes, I also had few silent crushes after recent update.

Roctan · October 2025

I can confirm this issue as well.
In the last weeks I’ve been experiencing crashes much more often – no error message, just straight to the desktop.

What makes it especially frustrating is that after the crash, it’s usually impossible to log back into the game for quite a while, running into the well-known error codes instead.

It’s not just me: in almost every raid or even in 4-man groups there is usually at least one player who crashes like this, forcing the entire group to wait.

I really understand why more and more players are leaving the game because of issues like this.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno – could you please bring this up with the dev team? It’s happening more and more frequently and is very disruptive to group content.

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO · October 2025

Try deleting ShaderCache.cooked and UserSettings.txt in your ESO dir (usually Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live). This fixed the crashes for me. ShaderCache will be rebuilt automatically when you launch the game. Deleting UserSettings will revert to default client settings. The latter is a bit annoying tho, because you have to accept all legal documents again.

Also there are many more things you can try to resolve the issue, like repairing the game, updating your graphics driver, updating Windows, disabling some addons and so on.

mandricus · October 2025

Happens quite often to me and my friends as well. Not a crash of the game, but a disconnection from the server. Usually in very hectic moments of a fight. Happens randomly but usually at least once a evening someone get disconnected and have to wait for the timeout in order to be able to login again

ProfessorKittyhawk · October 2025

Since the latest patch I've been having problems getting disconnected. Repaired the client and did a speed test on my internet and that's all fine. Trying to do writs or anything and suddenly everything stops then kicked to log in screen.

Edit: typo

LalMirchi · October 2025

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO wrote: »

Try deleting ShaderCache.cooked and UserSettings.txt in your ESO dir (usually Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live). This fixed the crashes for me. ShaderCache will be rebuilt automatically when you launch the game. Deleting UserSettings will revert to default client settings. The latter is a bit annoying tho, because you have to accept all legal documents again.

Also there are many more things you can try to resolve the issue, like repairing the game, updating your graphics driver, updating Windows, disabling some addons and so on.

Yes these workarounds help and I usually delete ShaderCache.cooked & PipelineCache.esopc after the 1st crash.

There's no need to delete UserSettings.txt as the game naughtily does this on occasion. For this reason I keep a copy of UserSettings.txt as I'm not scrolling and clicking through all that again.

Lately the game has been booting up in 1-bit color mode, only black and white on the game screen. Quitting and deleting ShaderCache.cooked & PipelineCache.esopc helps there as well.