Hello,

I'm a few hours into the Witcher 3 and have noticed as I've started progressing a crash to desktop has started to become quite regular, to the point where it now happens as soon as I load a game. The game just instantly closes and returns to desktop. No error messages. No nothing... I have no idea why it's doing this.

So far I've tried:
-Verifying the game after removing an ultra widescreen mod.
-Reinstalling the game without any mods.

I have no idea what else to do. I've tried turning graphics settings from ultra to low and reinstalled my video card drivers. There are no technical issues with any other software/hardware on my system.

Specs:

Windows 10
Processor: Intel Core i9 9900K at stock overclock (4.7 GHz on all cores with no cooling issues).
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z-390 Ultra
Memory: 16 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz.
Video Card: ASUS NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti
Audio Card: Sound Blaster AE-5
SSD: Western Digital Blue 1 TB

All drivers and software are up to date.

Thanks for any help!

Hey it seems like you are starting the game with Galaxy. In most cases you won't see an error message if a game startet with Galaxy crashes.

Try starting the game without Galaxy. I hope you will see an error message we can work with to solve your problem.

I was running it through Galaxy. I tried just now to play it without Galaxy launching it straight from the thewitcher3.exe. And just seconds ago I had another 'quit to desktop'. Just as I was entering a fight the game just popped straight back to desktop. No freezing, no crash report, no error message, not even a hint it was about to happen...

Edit: I stand corrected! It did give me a crash report this time! I was looking in the wrong location:

Edit 2: I can't seem to post the 2nd log which is bigger as this forum won't bloody allow it...

Is your pagefile active? If no activate it. The quick way doing it is to open Windows Powershell as Administrator, enter wmic and confirm by pressing enter. Enter computersystem where name ="%computername%" set AutomaticManagedPagefile=True if system should manage the pagefile or
pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=16384,MaximumSize=24576 if you wish to set your own values. Press enter to confirm type exit and enter and restart your system.

If this doesn't work limit your fps to 60 or 59 in Nvidia control panel. It may help to set a framerate target in GPU Tweak II if that is what you're using. I am not sure what the option is called or whether it exist in MSI Afterburner so if that is what you use you will have to look that information up yourself.

In case your system is overclocked you should try running it at stock-clocks both system as well as GPU.

It's worth running TW3 in administrator mode and see whether Defender or any such other MS security process is telling you that it has blocked something. Also worth checking your 3rd party protection suite whether there is a blocked process.

Running it in compatibility mode either Win 8.1 or 7 may help but in case of the error I guess this isn't going to make much of a difference.

Check your RAM with Windows built-in memory diagnostics. Here is a how-to on Windowscentral

System wise what else you can do is run sfc /scannow to check whether some files are corrupted from within the powershell.

Check your TW3 installation and in case you got mods running deactivate/remove them and see whether it helps. Finally you will also want to make sure that no unnecessary processes are running, no background apps, etc. Try a clean boot and if nothing else helps, contact support and pester them until your problem is solved. ;-)

Thanks for the replies. After following these and many others I stumbled upon the solution by chance: open web browser. This was listed under the support section and has to be one of the most outlandish solutions I've heard. But I can recreate the crashes instantly by having a browser open. With it closed? everything works fine... strangest problem but at least it works now.

Thanks again!

Edit: Turns out it wasn't even that either. Only way to fix it was a full reinstall of Windows 10...