3 weeks, WoW: War Within still crashes on external ssd

Support Technical Support
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WoW constantly crashes on my external ssd, unlike nearly every game I know of (examples of games bellow). From old to new, mmo to single player. I use external ssd because I don’t have enough internal storage space to install my games on it. And also, I want this external ssd to work and it works on every game I know of, except WoW.
But if you know how to install WoW on my internal ssd while still keeping all the other battlenet games on my external ssd, please share that would also be helpful.

otherwise I still wanna fix this.

WoW installed on external 3.2 usb-c 4TB SSD storage device to thunderbolt 4 port laptop.
NTFS (default) formatted.
Laptop windows 11 64bit, 64gb memory, rtx 4080, intel i9 gen 14.

I tried reinstalling WoW many times. Scanning and repairing many times.
I enabled write caching on my external ssd. This solved the “unexpected error” game crash shutdown during loading screens.

But now I am still getting “ACCES_VIOLATION” and “Could not read memory” errors, game crash shutdowns, also outside of loading screens.

I have a small image with 3 error examples on it. And I have the big error.txt files in my WoW folders.
The image is acces violation and could not read memory, but with some strange number and letter combinations that are unique to each error of which I understand nothing. But tell me if you want me to write the errors as it is displayed. Or how to share an image here, if possible. Or the error.txt. As I am not familiat with how these forums work.

I have tried everything to identify and fix this WoW crashing when running on an external SSD, for 3 weeks. Trying endless things. With all the suggestions from WoW Support and Many many helpful suggestions from WoW forums, all of you (thanks for that). I have run out of options.

Endless different graphical settings. Running game as administrator. Checking all drivers. Making sure everything is up to date. Many reinstalls, many different settings.

And WoW support suggested I contact a local technician if I run out of options, but the problem with that is that literally not a single other game on this planet, that I know of, has ever had issues with this external ssd. Only WoW has this issue. And not a single other mmo has issues with this ssd either.

How can a local technician help me solve an issue with the WoW game itself?
WoW war within not only crashes with “unexpected errors” during loading screens, or (after enabling write caching) “Access violation” and “could not read memory” errors.
But WoW has actually frozen my computer to the point that not even ctrl-alt-delete responded. Then I tried system buttons, not even the system buttons responeed. Then I tried the power button, and not even the power button responded. The only thing that responded was holding the power button to complete shut it down.
And then after enabling write caching, it also gave me a blue screen and automatically restarted my computer. Outside of the usual “access violation” and “could not read memory” errors.

Games that work perfectly fine on this external ssd are too many to fit here, but I’ll give some examples; Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, F1 '16 to F1 '23, Assetto Corsa Series, Automobilista Series, rFactor 2, iRacing, Project Cars 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 to 3. Black ops 4. Overwatch 1 and 2, Starcraft 2 series, Diablo 2 and 3 and 4, WoW Classic and Retail, Hearthstone, Half-Life 2 and expansions, Destiny 2, Portal 2, Ghost Recon breakpoint, Division 2, Star Wars jedi, the Star Wars after that one, Rainbow six, Rainbow Six Extraction, red dead redepmtion 2, Halo Infinite, Skyrim old and new, Dragon Age inquisition, Starfield, Fallout 4, Minecraft dungeons, Minecraft Legends, Minecraft, Civilization, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil series, monster hunter, guild wars 2, final fantasy singleplayer and mmo, New World mmorpg, Star Wars mmorpg, Harry Potter, Anthem, Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4, Battlefield 2042, Geometry Wars series, The first zelda side scroller rpg. Street Fighter 4, Mortal Combat gameboy advance emulator, Fifa 24, NBA 2k23, UFC 2 or 3, Borderlands 3, DCS (Digital Combat Simulator), Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds, Valorant, Left 4 Dead 2, Back 4 Blood, Warzone, Arma 3, Many Indie games, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, God of War, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Battlefront II, Titanfall 2, Counter-Strike, Harry Potter, Control, Batman, Cyber Punk 2077, The Witcher 3, Far Cry series, Forza Motorsport 7 or 8 (the newest one).

That is why I don’t understand that WoW support says that this is an issue with my hardware and that I should contact a local technician (which I will definitely do at some point, simply out of curiosity).
I tried endless many things over the course of 3+ weeks, as mentioned.
I also tried deleting addons and wtf folder.
I don’t even remember all the things I tried, it’s too much.

I hope someone here can help me understand what might be causing this issue, I would very much appreciate it if you have even any idea at all, so thanks in advance if you do.

I tried endless many nvidia settings to try and see if that is the cause, mostly default tho. Clean install of many things. Also tried allot of intel stuff. Also set to default now as always. But its simply not a cpu or gpu issue. And neither out of date motherboard firmware. Every piece of hardware is fully up to date.
Hardware Monitor shows very good functioning of all hardwares.
And again, literally every game works on it except WoW: WW.

One maybe important or significant thing I noticed is that certain Macro’s, that I have made, dissapeared after crashing. And the very old macros are still there. So this might be an issue with computer to server synchronisation. But that is just wild guess, as I have no idea.

Game has crashed definitely 50 to 100 times.

If you have any ideas, please, feel free to share.
I’m just putting this out there, and maybe try and fix or understand it with the help of a local technician if I can find one, at some point perhaps, maybe.

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Have you tried to move WoW and Battlent temporarily to the internal SSD and try if it crashes there? That could be used to rule out issue with external drive.

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Yes, thank you for your suggestion or question.
On internal ssd it doesn’t crash. But I have to test this issue atleast for 3 days in a row, because when I enabled Cache Writing on my external SSD I was certain that the issue was fixed. And for 3 days it worked perfectly fine and then started giving me errors again, and I am just confused beyond believe at this point.
I all the testing again and really nothing helps. Reinstall, scans, error checks on ext ssd, defragment, etc.

So how can I know? I tested internal ssd for 1 day and it didnt have any issue.
I am just assuming internal works.
But ofcourse I do wanna fix this ssd issue, if possible. As all other games work on it.

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I found a fix (at least it worked for me so far).
Multi-Plane Overlay (MPO - Windows feature) causes freezing/flickering/stuttering/driver crash.

To disable download this reg from Nvidia (it works for AMD cards too, its a windows bug):
nvidia.custhelp. com/ci/fattach/get/824301808/0/filename/mpo_disable.reg

or edit with regedit yourself:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm]
“OverlayTestMode”=dword:00000005

You can also try this tool with multiple fixes:
github. com/RedDot-3ND7355/MPO-GPU-FIX

What else I did (Nvidia only) was to give full permissions to the SYSTEM user to nvlddmkm.sys in system32.

Let me know if it fixed for you.

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Thank you for sharing that, I will definitely look deeper into it.
I guess I kinda do need a technician support, cause I understood very little of what you just said. :sweat_smile:

But I’m glad I can try this, so thanks for sharing.
Gives me something new to try.

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The “ACCES_VIOLATION” error rarely happens from an SSD its usually some problem with the CPU / RAM or the Video Card and/or drivers / windows itself , in this case with Windows, lately i had this issue with ACCES_VIOLATION on 2 computers and this is the only fix ive found but in your case could be something else too, i just shared something to try if everything else doesnt fix it.

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Yes, thank you. Everything else definitely doesn’t fix it. I am open to every single possible idea at this point, so I appreciate it.

I don’t know about windows, I still have 3 days left to test this, but so far, WoW on internal SSD doesnt crash.
So it is external SSD related, but then again, every single game I know of works perfectly fine on this external SSD.

So only WoW on external SSD doesn’t work.
If the external SSD works fine on all other games, then I can only conclude that it is WoW related. But a combination between WoW and external SSD as far as I know, as internal SSD seems to have worked fine for 1 day, tho I need to test it more to be sure.

The only Windows problem I ever had was when I installed Preview updates for Windows. That broke almost every function of my laptop. So I simply never do that anymore.

In 3 days I will see if internal ssd works perfectly or not. So far so good.

It’s hard for me to identify the issue. I got one company for the laptop, one company for the external ssd, one company for the WoW game, one company for the windows OS.
Trying to get tech support for all these factors, I would perhaps need some kind of Frankenstein technician. :sweat_smile:

But I do think my laptop comes with very good, experienced and advanced tech support. Altho, I’m not sure if this issue is really related to the laptop, I do think they will have a much better knowledge of what the issue actually is or might be, than I do.

And so far, WoW support is way too busy to help me with this issue. I assume…
Cause in the past, I have always gotten perfect flawless support for WoW. Now they just say, contact a local technician and that the issue is not coming from their part and mark it solved. Which to me sounds like “We’re way too overwhelmed right now with the release of our new expansion.”

I mean, it seems like they completely redesigned the auction house in just a couple of days. I can only imagine how busy the WoW team is.

What is funny is that they referred me to possible solutions with issues regarding call of duty. Yeah, that definitely sounds like they are busy.
And then to consider that people have had summer vacation.

I don’t have a rush. So I’ll just wait for the dust to settle a bit.

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I just wanted to say im having similar issues with having WoW on an internal SSD. I keep getting stuck at loading Screens when phasing and either i restart (sometimes 3-4 times til it works again) or i wait it out and get “Transfer Aborted: Instance not found”.
I tried everything from their support article aswell as writing a ticket which didnt help at all (referring to a local technician because THEY cant fix their own game? lol).
The problems started during last week of MoP Remix for me and since then while playing i have to restart the game about 20 Times daily its really frustrating.
When i was on vacation during early access of tww ive had 0 issues while playing on my Mac, but on my main windows setup at home the game is a total mess…

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Thanks for sharing that, I am glad I am not alone. That is actually helpful to know. :sweat_smile:

I started playing at about the same moment, late mist of pandaria stuff.

I thought the issue might be related to the WW patch. I thought everyone was having the same issue.
At some point I asked other players if they had the same issue, and no one had it.

Few people use external ssd perhaps.

But thanks again, this eleviates suspicions that my laptop might be the issue. As you most likely have a different computer, I assume.

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Just a comment to point out that you probably won’t ever get official support for this issue, as playing from an external ssd is not an officially supported method, and therefore outside of Blizzards support scope.

Not supported doesn’t mean “doesn’t work”, it just means that if it fails to work, they won’t be able to assist you in making it work.

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They arent even able to assist me on making it work on my internal ssd :slight_smile:

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ok so im only playing for an hour and already had to restart wow like 7-8 times, this game literally becomes unplayable for me and ive tried everything, from reinstalling the game 3 times, all addons reinstalled, to regedit, to disabling all addons, tried all their fixes they have on the linked support articles, disabled all other software that wasnt necessary…
I really dont know what to do anymore, i just want to enjoy this game but its becoming really hard on certain days when you cant play for half an hour without being stuck in a loading screen, getting either kicked into your warband character list or into the previous instance (hearthstones go on cooldown if this happens btw :slight_smile: )

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EDIT: As I suspected, after 3 days, the internal SSD also starts crashing WoW. The sound stutters, blue screen and laptop shutdown.

Now this is no longer an issue with the external ssd. it’s an issue with the WoW game.

And even on my external ssd, all games work fine, so… its definitely an issue with the WoW game.

@Trovlak
Ok, thanks. I didn’t know that. I guess that’s kind of a waste for my external ssd, but…

I guess that’s ok, as long as WoW stays the only game that doesn’t work on my external ssd. Even every other battlenet game works perfectly fine on my external ssd, so I am glad my external ssd does have a purpose still for now.

@Plantbased
Really? I have tested about 2 days on my internal ssd now, and have had zero issues or crashes. I did get disconnected very suddenly, one time, but was able to instantly log back in and reload the game.

@Plantbased
Wow, that’s really interesting. That sounds allot like every single issue i’ve had since I started playing WW update. But it seems weird that you are playing on an internal ssd and you get the same issues I have on my external ssd.

Perhaps there are more to these issues than just an “external ssd”

I did notice you shared similar bugs as I have experienced, where i portal, enter, or hs somewhere, get disconnected and HS on cooldown and I didnt arrive at the HS location. Many things like that. And I also did many scan repairs, reinstalls, deleting addons and wtf folders. trying endless different graphical settings.

I have 2 days of smooth operation on my internal ssd now, so one or two more day and I’m pretty confident that all my issues are gone when playing on my internal ssd. I’ll see…

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i have found an archived thread with dozens of ppl having the same problem as me just from last year https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/stuck-in-loading-screens/475545/457
this really has something to do with the game/server structure, it was already pretty much confirmed to me since the problems just appeared after a patch and me trying literally ANYTHING on my PC to make it work

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This would indicate hardware, driver or some other conflicting software like antivirus being the culprit. Check Windows event viewer to see if there are any errors happening at the same time. If the event log doesn’t provide any clear guidance I’d start with checking RAM for any potential errors there as it is relatively easy to rule out and can sometimes cause issues like data corruption.

Not every game behaves same way and sometimes actual hardware faults are progressive with minor errors at first until eventual full failure.

This obviously doesn’t rule possibility that WoW has problems, too, as I have seen reports about WoW crashing - but just WoW crashing should not cause bluescreen unless there is other issues with devices/drivers.

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@Plantbased
wow thanks, that is very interesting, I certainly hope it isn’t my computer. Cause it’s kinda new.

@Grelier
thanks so much for helping me understand this Grelier.

This could be a plausible reason to check in with my laptops tech support. They are really competent, but I did need atleast a potential reason to ask them for help. And what you say makes sense, because this is written especially on the last few errors I’ve got, stating a memory issue.

I don’t think there are background apps or services or processes run. I usually delete any adds or extra applications I don’t need the moment I use a new computer.
But my RAM is kind of unique perhaps?

Here is the list of the kinds of words I read in between all the error pop up window texts.

  • Unexpected Error
  • Fatal Condition
  • Failed to read FileData
  • Unknown Failure
  • ACCES_VIOLATION
  • memory could not be read
  • memory could not be executed

and ofcourse the “total computer freeze” and “the blue screen+restart”

The “access violation” and “memory could not be read/executed” and “blue screen+restart” is the most recent ones. With WoW installed on the internal SSD and running from there.

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This is most definitely a WoW problem. I suspected drivers because the issues were consistent with that, but since updating all problems persist.

I had 0 crashes in WoW before, last I played was 1.5 months before expansion release. Now ever session is plagued with freezes, each session has different issues but things as simple as opening the map got me killed in a delve today. I’ve had many similar crash error messages to you, but the most common is the game making my whole PC not respond 5-30 seconds and then either the game world disappearing and re-rendering or WoW crashing out entirely.

I am not using an external SSD, and I play numerous other games off the same drive, none of which have ANY performance issues.

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@Iribank

Thanks, I am glad you shared that. I haven’t found many people who have this issue. I have the same kind of issue.
I hope it can get fixed. One way or another.

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