Apex crash during startup - Intel 13/14th generation bug with fix
I have played Apex legends for years on the PC I am currently using. All of that ended on October 2, 2024 when I tried to start Apex. When I tried to start it On Oct 2 it played the introduction video and then showed the static graphic for the current season and then it would freeze and either immediately exit to windows or wait maybe a minute and then exit to windows. I read many of the related posts that I could find and tried everything until I finally bit the bullet and did a clean install of windows and after that a "clean boot". Noting fixed the problem. Then came November 14, 2024 and I came across the following article
Is your intel core i9-13900K crashing in games? Your motherboard BIOS setting may be to blame - other high-end Intel CPUs also affected (update)
I then found the following article by Intel
Intel core 13th and 14th gen desktop instability root cause update" dated 9/25/2024.
The bottom line of what that that article says is that there is a bug in the CPU microcode and that needs to be fixed. The fix is a new version of microcode "12B". You should check to see if your motherboard manufacturer has a BIOS update that includes that microcode. I have an MSI motherboard and the most recent BIOS release for it does have the 12B microcode. I updated my motherboard BIOS and FINALLY Apex Legends would run again (after hours of debugging, digging, reading and total disappointment.
If you have an Intel 13/14th generation cpu that is affected then this will fix it for you. I sure hope that this will be helpful to some of you as it was very frustrating for me.
