Black Screen After Javelin Anti-Cheat Splash Screen Loads

Just as a preamble, I troubleshooted this with Claude for around 2 and a half hours and the rest of the post is essentially a troubleshoot log generated by Claude at the end of our run. No, I'm not going to try reinstalling as I feel the list of things we tried is pretty exhaustive and a reinstallation would essentially just be kicking the can down the road at this point. I don't quite understand the super technical stuff here, especially pertaining to our results we found using Event Viewer and cmd, so go easy on me when it comes to nomenclature and such. I'm more than happy to provide dmp files since that was something we weren't quite able to parse. Anyway, here it is:

System

• OS: Windows 11 25H2, Build 26200.x
• GPU: NVIDIA (currently rolled back to driver 596.49, per DICE's own recommendation for the water-related crash; also tested on 610.88 — same result on both)
• Install: Steam (Battlefield 6)
• Secure Boot: Enabled
• TPM 2.0: Enabled
• Memory Integrity (HVCI): Enabled

Symptom

Game crashes consistently before getting past the Javelin anti-cheat splash screen. A small black window appears in the top-left corner of the screen for a few seconds, then the process dies with no in-game error message. This has happened on 31 separate crash dumps so far, all with the same signature.

Event Viewer findings (consistent across crashes)

System log, at the moment of every crash:

File System Filter 'EAAntiCheat' (Version 10.0, 2026-07-29T17:39:09.000000000Z) unloaded successfully.

Application log, seen twice:

Failed retrieving service path.

Application log, seen once (application crash event):

Faulting application name: EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe, version: 1.0.43937.0 Faulting module name: EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe, version: 1.0.43937.0 Exception code: 0xc0000409 Fault offset: 0x0000000000771cf5 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Battlefield 6\EAAntiCheat.GameServiceLauncher.exe

(0xc0000409 = STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN / fastfail — consistent with the anti-cheat's own tamper-detection self-terminating rather than a genuine memory corruption bug in the launcher itself.)

Crash dump analysis (WinDbg)

• Exception: c0000005 (Access Violation), consistently a write to address 0x18 — a null/near-null pointer write.
• Faulting module resolves to bf6.exe, offset varies slightly between dumps but stays within the same functional region.
• sc query EAAntiCheat while stopped: WIN32_EXIT_CODE: 31 (ERROR_GEN_FAILURE).
• fltmc filters run during a live launch attempt confirms EAAntiCheat does successfully attach (5 instances, altitude 363250, no altitude collisions with any other loaded filter — only stock Microsoft filters present: WdFilter, bfs, CldFlt, etc. No third-party AV/EDR filters detected on this system).

Troubleshooting already completed (no change in behavior from any of these)

• Verified game files
• Reinstalled EA Anti-Cheat multiple times, including manually via EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe (Administrator) → Uninstall All → reinstall
• Confirmed Secure Boot enabled, TPM 2.0 enabled
• Confirmed Windows Memory Integrity (HVCI) enabled
• Confirmed Windows Driver Verifier is not active (verifier /querysettings → all flags 0x0, no verified drivers)
• GPU driver rollback to version 596.49 (EA/DICE's own recommended rollback version) — no change
• Also tested on driver 610.88 — same crash signature
• Disabled PCIe Link State Power Management (RTD3 mitigation) — no change
• Launched bf6.exe directly, bypassing the EA App — no change
• No Riot Vanguard/Valorant installed
• Uninstalled Apex Legends (only other EA-published title installed) to rule out anti-cheat service conflicts — no change
• Added Battlefield 6 install folder and C:\Program Files\EA\AC\ to Windows Defender exclusions — no change
• Tested on a brand-new, unconfigured Windows user profile on the same machine — same crash, ruling out per-user/profile-level corruption
• Found two copies of EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe in the install directory (...\Battlefield 6\EAAntiCheat\EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe and ...\Battlefield 6\EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe) — ran the correct one as Administrator, no change

Crash dump files

[31 .mdmp files available — will link via Google Drive / attach as requested]

Summary

This appears to be a Javelin/EAAntiCheat-side failure rather than a local configuration issue — the anti-cheat filter driver successfully loads, then unloads mid-initialization, immediately followed by the launcher process self-terminating with a fastfail exception. Every standard system-level, driver-level, and profile-level cause has been ruled out. Happy to provide any additional logs, dumps, or diagnostics EA needs to investigate further.