Fix Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Crash On Startup, Loading Screen, Or Crashing After Splash Screen

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is one of the most awaited games of the year with a huge fan following. It’s the twelfth major installment in the Assassin’s Creed series developed by Ubisoft’s Montreal Studio. We had to struggle a lot with the previous title of the series with the game crashing after splash screen. After days to attempts, we managed to resolve the issue with the previous title. So, we decided to compose this guide to help early players who face the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash on startup, crash at loading screen, or the game crashing after the splash screen.

Contents

Fix Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Crash On Startup and Crash On Loading Screen Verify the Game on Epic Games Store or Uplay Update the Graphics Card Driver and the OS Change Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Graphics Settings Run Uplay and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as an Administrator Play the Game on Borderless Ensure Your CPU Supports AVX Move the Game to SSD Disable Overlays or DirectX Hooking Software Revert Overclocking Modify Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Settings Ensure System is Using Dedicated Graphics Card Disable Nvidia Ansel Whitelist Uplay and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Antivirus Software Other Common Solutions to the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Crash at Startup Terminate Unnecessary Applications and Perform Clean Boot Disable Shader Cache Remove Bad Sectors from the HHD or SSD Modify Discord Settings Installing Latest Microsoft Visual C++

Nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a game for nearly an year and on the launch day if the game fails to load. We understand your situation and have all possible solution to the launch problems with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. As the game releases there may be specific bugs that could be causing the crash, we will either update this guide with more solutions or compose an entirely new one to address all those problems. Keep scrolling to fix the crashing problem with the game.

Fix Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Crash On Startup and Crash On Loading Screen

Before we proceed with the guide, ensure that your system meets the minimum specifications to play the game. If your system does not meet a particular specification, that could be the reason the game is crashing at startup. Here are the minimum specifications to play the game.

Recommended Configuration – High preset 1080p 60 FPS

Processor (AMD / INTEL): Ryzen 7 1700 – 3.0 Ghz / i7-6700 – 3.4 Ghz
RAM: 8 GB (Dual-channel mode)
Video Card: AMD Vega 64 – 8GB / GeForce GTX 1080- 8GB
Storage: SSD (50 GB)
Operating system: Windows 10 (64-bit only)
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
Additional note: Requires GPU with DirectX 12 (Feature Level 12_0) support

If your system meets the minim specifications to play the game, continue with the guide. The first solution we will attempt to resolve the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash on startup and not launching problem is to repair the game files.

Verify the Game on Epic Games Store or Uplay

We are going to attempt a different route than just verifying and repairing the game files. Go to the install folder and delete a few files. Don’t worry it won’t damage the game as the repair process will download it again. In our experience, running the repair using any launch does not yield, but if you delete a few files and then attempt to use the launcher’s feature, it has the potential of fixing the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash at startup. So, in order to proceed with the process, first delete a few files from the install location and follow the below steps to repair the game depending on your launcher.

Repair Gam via Uplay

Lunch Uplay > click on Games > hover over Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (an arrow will appear)> click the arrow to open a drop-down menu > select Verify files.

Repair Game via Epic Games Store

Launch the Epic Games store > go to Library > Assassin’s Creed Valhalla > click on 3 dots near the title and select Verify.

The launchers will detect the missing file and perform a small update, after which, the game should launch without any issue. But, if the problem persists, follow through with the other solutions.

Update the Graphics Card Driver and the OS

Nvidia recently released a new drier update with day-one support for a lot of new games including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Ensure that you have updated the graphics card driver. You should also have the latest Windows update.

If the game was working fine and you performed an update after which the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash at startup or not launching problem started, you should consider rolling back the update.

Here are the steps you can follow –

Press Windows Key + X and select Device Manager
Expand Display adapters, and right-click on the dedicated graphics card and select Properties
Go to the Driver tab
Click on Roll Back Driver

Change Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Graphics Settings

If you are playing the game on high system specifications, it’s most likely to crash, stutter, drop FPS, and lag. As such, you should set the graphics settings from the in-game graphics settings to the lowest and increase the settings by one until the game stops to stutter. When the stuttering starts to occur, the previous settings are the best for your system. Here are some recommendations you can try from the game’s graphics settings.

If you are running on Fullscreen mode, change to Borderless
If the game is already on Borderless, change to Fullscreen
Turn off Vsync. If the game is still stuck on loading change to Adaptive
Anti-Aliasing to Adaptive
Set Shadows to Low
Environment Details to Low or Medium
Texture Details to Low or Medium
Turn Off Screen Space Reflections
Set Volumetric Clouds to Low

Run Uplay and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as an Administrator

One of the most basic reasons for games crashing is the lack of admin privilege to the launcher or the game. As a gamer’s modus operandi, you should run every program with admin permission, but Windows does not provide this by default. Without the admin permission, the game may not have write permission or certain functions of the game may be blocked which is causing the crash at startup.

You can provide the permission from the desktop shortcut of the application or the executable file .exe at the install location. Right-click on the .exe > Properties > Compatibility > check Run this program as an administrator and save the changes.

Play the Game on Borderless

Playing any game in windowed and borderless is not as fun as fullscreen, but the fullscreen mode consumes a lot of resource on the system and could be causing crashes on mid-range PC. The crash can be at startup or when loading certain resource hungry scenes of the game. As such, try playing the game on borderless and it may fix the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash at startup or not launching problem.

If the game is crashing before you interact with it, you may not have access to the menu and therefore, cannot change to Windowed mode normally. As such, you have to find the game’s .ini file and change some values.

We do not have access to the game yet, but usually, the file is located in Documents > Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Locate the file ACOvalhalla.ini and open it. Chang the values from WindowMode=0 to WindowMode=2.

Ensure Your CPU Supports AVX

AVX stands for Advanced Vector Extensions and both AMD and Intel support the extension set. However, if you are running an older CPU, there is a chance that it does not have AVX. Without the extension, the game will not launch and crash immediately after clicking without any error. There is no way around it, you will have to upgrade your processor. If you were unable to play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, God Eater 3, Resident Evil 7, Death Stranding, or Horizon Zero Dawn due to the same problem – the game crashing without any error on launch – the possible reason is your processor does not support AVX.

There are some workaround that may be able to run the game on a processor without AVX, but it’s not worth the effort since the game’s performance would be severely hindered. You will have a software perform the functions of an AVN capable CPU.

The only permanent solution is to upgrade the CPU as AVX is the future and more and more games will not work without it until the point when you cannot play anything new.

However, the AVX issue would only be for a small number of players. For others, the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla not launching or crash at startup may be due to other reasons. Read further to find out.

Move the Game to SSD

I guess the majority of us are already using SSD on our gaming rigs paralleled with the HDD. If you have installed the game on the HDD and the OS on the SSD, move the game to SSD. When moving, I suggest you uninstall the game and reinstall it at the new location. For some reason, moving the game does not resolve the launch error.

Disable Overlays or DirectX Hooking Software

Steam Overlay in particular is known to crash games, but since the game’s not launched on Steam yet, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash at startup or not launching may be occurring due to any other overlay such as Discord Overlay, GeForce Experience Overlay, or others. Overlays cause problems when the game attempts to render UI and 3D environments, or load content.

In addition, DirectX hooking software can also cause the game to crash, so you need to disable those too before you launch the game. Here is a list of programs known to cause problems with Ubisoft games.

Fraps	Gigabyte OC Guru I & II	MSI Afterburner
EVGA Precision X	Xfire	MSI Kombuster
Gamer OSD	Raptr and Rivatuner	TeamSpeak
Evolve Client	Mumble	Curse Voice
Steam Overlay	RaidCall	ASUS GPU Tweak
Discord	Overwolf	ASUS Smart Doctor

Revert Overclocking

If you are using any software to overclock the CPU or GPU, it can be causing the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crashing or freezing. Disable all overclocking software and revert the overclock. You should also set the clock speed of the CPU to default from the BIOS, in case there is some factory overclocking in turbo mode.

Modify Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Settings

If you were able to play the game earlier, but the crash started after a setting change, the change is to blame. Ideally, when you first start the game play in default settings and tweak settings one at a time, so you can identify the problematic settings when the problem occurs. Go to the game’s settings by clicking on Options. Head to the Display setting and make the following changes.

If you are running on Fullscreen mode, change to Borderless
If the game is already on Borderless, change to Fullscreen
Turn off Vsync
Set Shadows to Low
Environment Details to Low or Medium
Texture Details to Low or Medium
Turn Off Screen Space Reflections
Set Volumetric Clouds to Low

Now close the game and restart the system. Check if the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla in-game crash still occurs.

Ensure System is Using Dedicated Graphics Card

For users with two graphics cards on their computer, sometimes the game could be using the less powerful integrated graphics card, which could be causing the not launch and crashing problem. Ensure that the game users the dedicated graphics card. GO to the Nvidia Control Panel > 3D Settings > manage 3D settings > Program Settings > select the game and set the preferred graphics processor as High-performance Nvidia Processor.

Disable Nvidia Ansel

Ansel is a Nvidia software that can be used to take screenshots in 360 degree and share them, but the software is known to conflict with games, particularly the Assassin’s Creed series. Disable the software to fix Assassin’s Creed Valhalla crash at startup and not launching problem. Here are the steps you can follow to disable Nvidia Ansel.

Go to C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Ansel\Tools\NvCameraConfiguration
Double-click to run “NvCameraConfiguration” and select “Disable”.

The above step would effectively disable Ansel and you should not encounter the crash.

Whitelist Uplay and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on Antivirus Software

If either the launch or the game is blocked by the antivirus software, it can lead to the game crashing at startup. Hence, you must provide exclusion or whitelist the programs on your respective antivirus software. Here are the steps for various software.

Windows Virus & Threat Protection

Windows Key + I > Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & Threat Protection > Virus & threat protection settings > Manage settings > Exclusions > Add or remove exclusions > Add an exclusion.

Kaspersky Internet Security

Home > Settings > Additional > Threats and Exclusions > Exclusions > Specify Trusted Applications > Add.

AVG

Home >> Settings > Components > Web Shield > Exceptions > Set the exception.

Avast Antivirus

Home > Settings > General > Exclusions > Set the exclusion.