EA Sports FC 26 — System Shutdown / Crash Report

ISSUE: Entire PC crashes/hard-shuts down when entering Ultimate Team menus (Objectives screen, opening packs, dynamic card animations). Game frequently crashes first, followed by a full system shutdown or reboot. Issue is reproducible and specific to EA FC 26 — no other games on the system exhibit this behavior.

SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
Motherboard: MSI MS-7D24
RAM: 16 GB (XMP/EXPO disabled during all tests below)
Storage: Samsung PM9F1 512GB NVMe (plus additional secondary drives)
OS: Windows 11

WINDOWS EVENT VIEWER FINDINGS (System Log):
Multiple Kernel-Power (Event ID 41) critical events recorded — 14 occurrences in a 24-hour period, several tied directly to FC 26 Ultimate Team sessions.

• Kernel-Power (41): BugcheckCode 30 + 0xC0000005 = KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (kernel-level memory access violation)
• BSOD stop code: KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (0x7A) — occurred while opening a pack in Ultimate Team
• EABackgroundService: Event 7030 — service failing to run correctly as an interactive service
• SysMain: Event 7023 — service crash with "incorrect parameter" error, timestamped to the same second as a kernel failure
• volmgr: Event 161 — dump file creation failed following the kernel crash
• DistributedCOM: Event 10016 — standard permissions warning (unrelated, present on most Windows systems)

Pattern: The game/GPU driver appears to crash first, followed by a full system power-off — not a simple crash-to-desktop, which points toward a kernel-level fault rather than a simple application crash.

TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS ALREADY COMPLETED (all unsuccessful in stopping the crash):

1. Reset active Ultimate Team squad
2. Verified/repaired game files via EA App
3. Full clean reinstall of GPU drivers (NVIDIA), including clearing DXCache
4. Full uninstall/reinstall of EA AntiCheat
5. Forced admin permissions on FC26.exe, EA App, and EA AntiCheat launcher
6. Disabled all overlays (EA App, Discord, NVIDIA)
7. Disabled XMP/EXPO in BIOS (ruled out RAM overclock instability)
8. Ran sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth — found and repaired corrupted system files; crash still occurred afterward
9. Reconfigured Windows virtual memory/pagefile (static size) — did not resolve
10. Toggled Core Isolation / Memory Integrity (HVCI) off and back on — did not resolve
11. Disabled SysMain (Superfetch) service — did not resolve
12. Cleared Windows Prefetch cache
13. Confirmed no third-party anti-cheat (Vanguard, BattEye, FACEIT) or antivirus conflicts present
14. Confirmed no PCIe correctable/uncorrectable errors, no NVMe drive failure/warning flags, no thermal throttling flags active during any captured HWiNFO session

HARDWARE VERIFICATION (COMPLETED — HARDWARE RULED OUT):

HWiNFO logging during actual in-game crash showed:

• CPU package temp peaked at 78°C (not in throttle range)
• No thermal throttling flags ever triggered
• No PCIe errors, no drive failure/warning flags
• GPU temps stayed in the 48-55°C range throughout
• Voltages (Vcore, +12V, +5V) stayed within normal range

OCCT "Power" stress test (dedicated combined CPU+GPU load test, ~10 minutes) completed with zero crashes or shutdowns:

• CPU package temp peaked at only 61°C under 100% sustained combined load
• GPU stayed at 45-55°C
• Vcore, +12V, +5V remained completely stable — no dips or spikes
• This rules out a failing/undersized PSU and rules out a raw thermal shutdown as the cause

Conclusion of hardware testing: The system is stable under a heavier and more sustained synthetic stress load than anything Ultimate Team produces. The crash is not attributable to PSU, GPU, CPU thermals, RAM, or storage hardware.

WHY THIS POINTS TO AN EA ANTICHEAT / KERNEL-LEVEL SOFTWARE ISSUE:

• The crash is triggered specifically by moments of dynamic asset rendering unique to Frostbite's Ultimate Team UI (Objectives menu, pack opening, animated card rendering) — not by sustained heavy load, which the system handles fine.
• EA AntiCheat operates at kernel level (Ring 0), meaning a fault in its driver can crash the entire OS rather than just the game — consistent with the 0xC0000005 kernel access violation captured.
• No other kernel-level software (other anti-cheats, AV) is running/conflicting.
• All standard remediation steps (repair, reinstall, clean driver install, cache clears, permission fixes) have been exhausted without resolving the issue.

REQUEST TO EA SUPPORT:
Requesting an investigation into a possible EA AntiCheat kernel driver conflict on Windows 11 with this hardware configuration (12th Gen Intel + RTX 3080), given:

• Reproducible KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (0xC0000005) and KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (0x7A) crashes tied specifically to Ultimate Team's dynamic UI elements
• Confirmed hardware stability via dedicated stress testing (OCCT Power test, HWiNFO monitoring)
• Full software-side troubleshooting already completed with no resolution

Happy to provide full HWiNFO CSV logs, Event Viewer exports, or DxDiag output if useful.