MW2’s first day hasn’t gone so smoothly. The game seems to be having a bad time, with players crashing for no particularly good reason. While it’s largely down to slightly less-than-desirable build stability, there seem to be some recurring factors that cause crashes. Here is a list of known MW2 crashes, and some solutions to mitigate risk to avoid it happening repeatedly.

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Here is a list of known MW2 Crashes, and some short-term solutions to potentially avoid it.

List of known MW2 crashes¶

PC Video settings: PC players playing the game on higher settings may find that MW2 has many frame skips, before eventually crashing to the desktop. The temporary solution is to close anything that is affecting your RAM or VRAM. Simple solution is to drop your video settings down to balances or below, depending on your current rig’s specifications.

Console Video Settings: We recommend dropping the settings down. You can turn off the on-demand texture streaming and have the less HD textures on. You can also turn on your console’s version of performance mode, which varies from console to console, typically a game’s launch options.

Third-party programmes: Third-party applications like Xbox PC App, Steelseries GG, and even Google Chrome tabs can ram your RAM and VRAM. We recommend turning them off, especially the pretty programs that can background record your footage, as that can eat away at your spare RAM at crucial moments.

Maps: It seems some maps are more likely to crash than others. This applies to the campaign and multiplayer. Known culprits are commonly Embassy, but this may still differ from person to person.

Issues while searching: If you’re creating a class and modifying loadouts, it is known to crash if you’re still changing something while you’re party leader queues for a match. Ensure everyone is not busy messing around with classes before your party leader queues.

Party Crashes: Having more than two people in a party seems to cause random crashes. Infinity Ward has publically stated on Twitter they are looking at fixes for this particular issue.

Verify Integrity of Game Files: This is more common with PC players. Either verify the integrity of your game files on Steam by right-clicking the game in Steam, going to properties, then going to the button that says verify integrity. If your game crashes while not on steam, an option should pop up asking you to verify the integrity of the game files using the MW2 launcher screen.

Don’t update your graphics driver: NVIDIA released a new graphics driver this week for Sackboy, Victoria 3 and some more new games. Beenox stated on Twitter (one of the PC dev studios working on MW2 has stated to avoid updating your graphics drives to 526.47, the most recent drivers). If you are countering issues, try to download and install a less recent version of nudie drivers for your GPU using the manual download patch tool from NVIDIA’s site, or using the Device Manger on windows, going to your display adapter option, right click and select properties on your GPU, and then roll back the driver.

Progress your shaders: Sometimes, a bad crash can result in the need for your game to optimize shadows. Do that if there’s a prompt to do so. While your shaders are part way through your game can lag due to unoptimized shaders and laggy games seem more likely to crash.

Launching in safe mode: Sometimes, the game will ask to launch in safe mode after a crash. This will reduce some of the goings on with applications, which can help you out, but there are still no guarantees.

Weapon Tuning Feature: The new Weapon Tuning system is reportedly broken. If you have weapon tuning on a loadout enabled, we advise disabling it, as picking the weapon can cause crashes. If you still want to use the weapon you have levelled that far, we recommend making a new loadout without the weapon tuning for that weapon enabled.

Camos: It seems like there’s a chance the game will crash if you change your camo. If you find this is happening to you with a certin weapon or select camo, then avoid it for now. Lets pray it is not your Gold camo.