Constant Crashes

[Kalyndra-silvermoon]

After 11.2 I keep getting ACCESS_VIOLATION coded crashes with ACCESS_VIOLATION - The instruction at “0x0000000000000000” referenced memory at “0x0000000000000000”.
The memory could not be “executed”. either executed or read. It doesn’t happen in a particular time or place, happens totally random. I am using RTX 4060 as my GPU, I updated all of my drivers, I tried repairing the game, I even reinstalled the game. Didn’t change anything.

here is the full crash.txt https://pastebin.com/jiwJchUn

[Saesha-twisting-nether]

Also an example of the crash code is 89959C60-B438-409F-873A-B546DAB52AC8

[Heehaw-silvermoon (Heehaw)]

I had this issue intermittently since TWW launched and after 11.2, it was happening every day.

My setup is only a couple of years old and I haven’t had issues in any other game:

• ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-F GAMING WIFI
• INTEL i9-14900k
• NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4090
• CORSAIR 32gb DOMINATOR PLATINUM DDR5 5600MHZ (with XMP enabled)

I tried all the obvious stuff like updating GPU drivers, clearing cache/wtf/addons, disabling addons, repairing/re-installing wow/battle net, fresh windows install… nothing would work. I was about to give up hope until I stumbled across some reddit posts with more suggestions.

I applied the following changes and haven’t had a ACCESS_VIOLATION crash in 6 weeks :

• Updated BIOS which included an update of the Intel microcode to version 0x12F (Intel 13th/14th gen CPUs are notoriously unstable if your motherboard isn’t using at least version 0x12B of Intel’s microcode)
• Disabled Intel Turbo Boost in BIOS
• Disabled “Core Isolation Memory Integrity” security setting in Windows 11
• Disabled “Optional GPU Features” and "Advanced Work Submit" in WoW’s graphics settings.

While I’m usually a bit more methodical in my approach to debugging issues, I was frustrated and out of patience after crashing multiple times during a 3hr raid, so I chucked everything at the problem. I don’t think any individual change was the silver bullet but some of these steps might be unnecessary. Either way, it’s a trade off I’m happy to accept for stability while the season is underway. I’ll probably try fiddling with these settings in the Midnight pre-patch to see if any can be safely reenabled.

My uneducated guess is that there were a few things contributing to my problem:

1. My BIOS was out of date and using an old version of Intel’s microcode and as a result Intel Turbo Boost was kicking in and bumping my CPU to unstable frequencies.
2. The “Core Isolation Memory Integrity” security setting in Windows 11 was slowing down WoW’s access to my memory resulting in perceived access issues.

While you might not have the exact same underlying cause, it might be. At the very least, I hope this gives you few other things to try.