PC BSOD on exit, every time
Running Madden 25 on a high end Windows 10 PC.
Since day one, my PC crashes hard with a black screen or blue screen EVERY TIME I exit the game (and now, so does BF2042). I have spent untold hours troubleshooting this issue (many more hours troubleshooting than playing), and after the latest troubleshooting effort (a complete Win10 recovery reinstall using the latest Windows 10 ISO), I've now just experienced a black screen crash while in the game (browsing through the playbook in the trainer).
In the cases where I do get a blue screen instead of a black screen, the error shown is:
BSOD error: "Kernel APC pending during exit"
Some of the things I have tried but have not made any difference:
-Insured that nVidia graphics drivers are the latest.
-Insured that Windows had all of the latest patches and updates
-Reinstalled Windows from a freshly downloaded ISO and allowed all updates to be applied
-Tried running the game in full screen, windowed, and borderless
-Insured that my system bios, chipset drivers, and other motherboard drivers were all up to date
-Performed a game repair through the EA game game app
-Set all settings back to the game defaults with low resolution screens, etc
-Disabled crossplay
-Unplugged all other game controllers (flight sticks, wheels, etc.) from my system
-Tried using only the keyboard as opposed to my xBOX controller for PC.
-Disabled ray traced Ambient Occlusion
-Disabled HDR
-Uninstalled and reinstalled EA anti-cheat
-Set processor affinity to use only the P-cores
My specs are:
Windows 10 22H3 build 19045.3803
Intel I-9 14900KF processor OC'd to about 5.8
48GB Ram
MSI RTX4090
Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Dark with water cooled processor.
Monitor is wide screen HDR400 3440 x 1400
See attached file for additional specs.
I have not verified this, but I think I'm getting a blue screen when exiting from windowed and borderless modes, and I'm getting a black screen when exiting from full screen.
Also, I've been playing Battlefield 2042 for years with no issues, but on a whim I tested it out during M25 troubleshooting because it uses the same EA anti-cheat software, and sure enough, I found that it too now crashes my PC on exit. After observing the issue under the various screen formats (windowed, borderless, full screen), The crash seems to be caused milliseconds after the game has exited and when probably unloading anti-cheat.
I had no issues last year with Madden 24 on the same PC., but I probably didn't play M24 after about October of 2023, and it is no longer on my PC, so I can't test it with the latest anti-cheat software. I'm not sure when this issue was introduced to anti-cheat. Is there a way to go back to an earlier version?
My PC is complex and it takes several minutes to power off and on, boot, log in, etc. so I end up not being able to play Madden (and now BF2042) because I don't feel like waiting for the thing to reboot after every time I play.
When Googling for this issue, I found a few people with the same issue, but no answers other than to remove all drivers and peripherals, which is not practical.
I do overclock gently (and have done so for many years), and I run some pretty complex games with maximum or very high end settings like DCS, iRacing, RDR2, Cyberpunk, etc., often with a Pimax Crystal VR and flight sticks, throttles, seat shakers, etc., and my system is rock solid stable for everything except M25 (and now BF2042).
I can't find any way to contact EA support about this issue. I guess, after selling millions of copies of a $70+ game, they can't afford to provide support?
Can anyone help? Thanks.
