Game crashes/freezes at “Preparing Game: Completed
Bought CFB 27 on Steam. Game gets through shader compilation, hits “Preparing Game: Completed,” then freezes/crashes — sometimes takes the whole system with it (Task Manager becomes unresponsive too).
Confirmed via Event Viewer (Windows Logs > Application) that this is caused by repeated crashes in EA’s own launcher processes, not the game executable itself:
- EALauncher.exe — Exception code 0xc0000005 (access violation), same fault offset (0x125480) across multiple crashes
- EALaunchHelper.exe — Same exception code 0xc0000005, consistent fault offset (0x3cbe99 / 0x3cc660)
- These crash repeatedly within seconds of each other (4 crashes in 5 seconds in one instance)
Troubleshooting already done, none of it resolved the issue:
- Fully uninstalled and reinstalled EA App (clean, including deleting leftover folders)
- Verified integrity of game files via Steam
- Repaired Visual C++ Redistributable (x64)
- Updated AMD Adrenalin GPU driver to latest
- Ruled out third-party antivirus (fully uninstalled Norton)
- Ruled out custom HID/controller drivers (issue persists with all custom input devices unplugged)
- Confirmed GPU power settings at default
System specs:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB (RDNA 4)
- RAM: 31.2GB
- OS: Windows 11
- Storage: NVMe SSD
Given the identical exception code and offset across repeated crashes on two separate EA-owned executables, this looks like a bug in the launcher itself rather than a local environment issue. Happy to provide dxdiag, full event logs, or anything else that’d help track it down.
