Apex Legends stuck at Easy Anti-Cheat (EOS) init since Aug 21 update [SOLVED]

Symptom

Since August 21, 2026, Apex Legends (Steam version) would no longer launch. The game would freeze at the "Initializing" screen with "Easy Anti-Cheat Bootstrapper (EOS) is not responding," eventually failing with an "internal error" if left long enough. The freeze only occurred when a network connection was active — disabling network access entirely allowed the bootstrapper to pass this screen — which pointed to a conflict related to networking.

Cause

Checking the Easy Anti-Cheat log file (%APPDATA%\EasyAntiCheat\anticheatlauncher.log) revealed the following entry:

Launcher finished with: 206, 'Please unload CmUpx.sys before starting the game'

CmUpx.sys (a Realtek-related driver service) was conflicting with EAC's process of downloading and unpacking the anti-cheat module over the network, causing the launcher to exit with an error.

Fix

From an elevated (Administrator) Command Prompt, I stopped the conflicting driver service:

sc query CmUpx ← check status (it showed "RUNNING") sc stop CmUpx ← stop the service

After stopping it, Apex Legends launched successfully.

Note on making this permanent

sc stop only stops the service temporarily — it will restart automatically on the next reboot, and the issue may return. To disable it permanently, run:

sc config CmUpx start= disabled

Since this driver is Realtek-related, disabling it may affect associated hardware/software functionality, so check your peripherals afterward. If anything breaks, you can revert with:

sc config CmUpx start= demand

Credit

This fix was made possible thanks to a post by IKAKUKUN on these forums, who shared how to check the log and the exact commands to resolve it. Posting this here in case it helps others hitting the same "EOS init" freeze. Thank you, IKAKUKUN!