Critical system freeze when running Apex Legends

Apex Legends causes a full system to freeze approximately 5–15 seconds after entering the lobby. The entire operating system becomes unresponsive (no input, no Task Manager, no BSOD). Only a forced power shutdown recovers the system.

Frequency: 100% reproducible

When it happens:
– After shaders finish loading
– While idle in lobby (no matchmaking required)

What does NOT help:
– Clean reinstall (EA App and Steam)
– GPU driver clean install (DDU)
– Easy Anti-Cheat repair/reinstall
– Windows power/performance changes
– Windows Memory Diagnostic (RAM check) – no errors found
– Disk error scan (chkdsk) – no bad sectors or file system issues

Important:
Other demanding games (Battlefield 2042, Assassin’s Creed Mirage) and professional applications (Adobe Illustrator, Figma) run without any issue. This indicates a game-specific or Easy Anti-Cheat kernel-level issue.

System:
– Windows 11
– ASUS gaming laptop
– NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU + Intel Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics iGPU (hybrid graphics)
– 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11370H @ 3.30GHz (3.30 GHz)

Impact:
Prevents gameplay entirely and risks hardware due to repeated forced shutdowns.

Note:
I have been playing Apex Legends for several years on the same device without any issues. This problem started recently and is the first time the game has become completely unplayable.

2 Comments

ju3d4s
Rising Novice
23 days ago
I have the same problem. Can someone update on this. Had similar troubleshooting done, including Core Isolation memory integrity and Realtek gaming GbE Family Controller (according to one reddit post)
THEDOJOO
Rising Novice
12 days ago
Update: Fixed it, sharing what worked for me.
The issue was not my PC or Windows. It turned out to be launch options causing Apex to freeze the whole system.
I had some old “FPS boost” launch options added before, like -high and cl_forcepreload. These can actually cause serious stability issues, especially with Easy Anti-Cheat and on laptops.
What fixed it for me was removing all old launch options and forcing Apex to run on DirectX 11 instead of DirectX 12, which is more stable on some systems.
What I did in Steam:
Open Steam and go to Library
Right click Apex Legends and open Properties
Go to Launch Options
Remove everything that is already there
Add only this line: -eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX11.json

Screenshot of Apex Lunch Options in Steam
After restarting my PC and launching Apex, the freezing stopped completely, and the game works normally again.
If anyone is getting full system freezes in the lobby, I really recommend checking launch options and trying DX11. Hope this helps others.

Ideas

Critical system freeze when running Apex Legends

2 Comments

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