For the past 10 days, my son has been unable to get NHL 21 to start. We have talked to tech support several times. We've cleared the cache, restarted the Xbox, uninstalled and reinstalled the game, adjusted the port settings, deleted local saved data, removed and re-added the profile. The last steps at least got the "syncing" bar to show up; then it freezes and crashes and there's an odd hum on the audio. Yet he can get the game to start if he switches to a different gamertag/profile on the same console. He doesn't want to lose his game progress under his primary gamertag, and he's not having any issues with other games under that gamertag. Has anyone else had this problem? EA Sports is not calling me back or opening a chat. Guess they're sick of me asking them to find a fix! Any ideas about what to do? Could it be a server problem associated with the account that prevents syncing? Thanks for any suggestions!

Are you gamesharing with your son? Perhaps he is trying to also share with a friend and it has caused his account to have lost an activation?Xbox has a reputation system if I remember correctly, is it possible he was reported for something and now the account is flagged? If it gets bad enough, accounts can sometimes be refused access to certain games.How many open cases do you have with ea support? Could be something as simple a temp lock until everything is resolved. Twitter support is usually very good when the option for chat isn't available -- if enough time has passed with no response, you should be able to politely request an update.Throwing a complete miracle hail mary here since this was a strange fix to an old and weird bug back in the day but have your son change his profile picture to a default one and unplug any usb cables from the console for a bit, see if that helps

I hope they can find a solution. As you expected, the case has been moved up to the investigations department. I hope I hear something back from them soon. I will post again with the outcome. Fingers crossed!

Thanks! No, my son is the only gamer in the house. I try to be IT support. LOL In my discussions with EA, they said nothing appeared to be wrong with the account or profile. They closed the original case and the second call. I can't seem to get them to resume the recent one where they had me (randomly) change the ports. Not sure how I'm supposed to report back to them that I did. We'll try your suggestions about the profile pic and cables. At this point, all we can do is try! Thanks again!

Hi there, @ThunderSnipez15. Try deleting your son's gamertag off the console. Then, download it again. It's possible there's some corruption causing this to happen and adding the gamertag again may resolve it. Let me know what happens. Thanks!

Thanks - we tried deleting and re-adding his gamertag; no change. We also took the step of having him log on to a friend's console and try to launch there. Didn't work. At this point, I think it must be on EA's end, not ours. I will contact help again to update them. Hope they have a way of finding the problem and fixing it.

Game crashes during launch but only for one gamertag/account

14 Replies

ThunderSnipez15
5 years ago
Is there any way for me to get an update on this situation/contact the investigation department? I have heard nothing at all from EA about this.
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
5 years ago
Hello, @ThunderSnipez15

I can see your case is still awaiting investigation. Unfortunately, we're very limited on what kind of details we can discuss here when it comes to accounts. The best way to get an update or to see if anything else can be done is to open a case with an advisor. That can be done here. You can also try sending a message to the @EAHelp Twitter or our support through Facebook here.
ThunderSnipez15
5 years ago
As promised, I am providing an update, and thankfully the news is great! We were advised to clear saved data everywhere, not just locally. The investigator thought that the problem could be "corrupted save data stuck in the Xbox cloud saves," and that clearing data everywhere could get rid of it. We were worried that my son would lose his progress, etc., and we were told that offline/single player progress for the game may be wiped, but any online HUT progress and content would remain because anything HUT related is stored on EA's servers. Since my son hasn't been able to play under his preferred profile for 2 months, we figured there was nothing to lose by trying it.
He was overjoyed when the game launched successfully and was happier still when he determined he hadn't lost anything. His ranking dropped because of not playing under that gamertag, but now that school is over, I'm sure he'll play endlessly and bring it back up. 😉
Hope no one else develops this issue, but if they do, I hope this solution helps them, too. Thanks!
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
5 years ago
@ThunderSnipez15

Great! I'm so glad to hear this! I also really appreciate the update. I'm always hesitant to suggest deleting from everywhere because it can be pretty damaging. It's good to hear this worked though. If you have any other issues, please let us know and tell your son, good luck on the ice 🙂

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Game crashes during launch but only for one gamertag/account

14 Replies

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