Re-posting this from a thread I created on the BG3-Steam forum:
"If anyone's having similar issues: It's been two days now since I disabled the launcher "for real". Using
Path to your Steam-library\steamapps\common\Baldurs Gate 3\bin\bg3.exe" %command%
in BG3 launch options in Steam (bg3.exe for Vulkan, bg3_dx11.exe for DirectX11). BTW: The examples in the linked article are missing the "3" from both file names ("bg.exe" when it should be "bg3.exe"), so copy-pasting them won't work.
Two 4 hour+ sessions with zero issues/crashes and Windows Reliability Monitor now has zero entries for me besides normal stuff like update-history events. No more scary red critical error entries in there.
Seems pretty clear that the lauchner is what messed things up for me.
Another interesting observation from the Reliability Monitor's timeline is that this seems to have started with the August 25th patch. On that day, my system's reliability took a huge nose-dive and since then there were at least one, more commonly two or even more, red entries/critical errors caused by the launcher-app. Plus the semi-regular, near daily, hard freezes I've talked about in my OP. That patch also gave me tons of "regular" CTDs during gameplay - those stopped with a hotfix published on Aug 26th, but the hard crashes/freezes didn't go away until I actually disabled the launcher.
According to some folks who took a look at my Windows error-codes over on a German Windows/IT-board, the launcher seems to have some sort of conflict with Windows .NET framework. At least on my system it does."
END of re-post.
What it boiled down to for me was this:
Bought/installed the game Aug 19th and it didn't give me any trouble until the Aug 25th patch. That one caused lots of normal CTDs during gameplay... like multiple CTDs per session. Plus I started to experience hard-crashes/freezes, usually after longer sessions. PC would freeze up completely (no BSOD), no more response to any input (not even the reset-button). A long press of the power button was the only way to get it out of that state. These CTDs went away with a fix they deployed a day later (Aug 26th), but my PC freezing up kept continuing.
I started checking Windows Event Viewer and found all sorts of errors in there, so I started to clean up and update my system.
1. Updated my BIOS
2. Updated Windows and confirmed NVidia drivers were up to date (although I do that regularly anyway)
3. Updated my mobo's chipset drivers
4. Updated my built-in Intel devices' (like LAN-adapter, etc) drivers
5. Ran Windows Memory Analyzer, no errors found
6. Ran Windows File System repair/analysis which *did* find and repaired some errors.
7. Removed all sorts of bloatware/helper apps from PC and/or autostart. Stuff like MSI Mystic Light, OpenRGB, Samsung Magician, etc were all banned from my system.
8. Kept Windows power-plan on "balanced"
I am as sure as I can be that the launcher was to blame for most of the stuff that was going on with BG3. The time-line in my Windows Reliability Monitor pretty much confirms this, since ever since Aug 25th, the reliability score went downhill and the timeline started to fill up with red warning icons when there were none before. And all of those entries always involved the Larian Launcher, often more than once per day. Plus, as I've stated in the quoted post: It's been two days now since I disabled this thing for good and the reliability-timeline's been clean since then.
![[Linked Image from cdn.discordapp.com]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/953622711584817212/1149974008557748234/image.png)
^Red marking: Aug 25th, hard crashes/PC freezes and "normal" CTDs start happening
Green marking: Sept 7/8, Launcher disabled for good, no more critical entries and no more PC-freezes/hard crashes.
It seems important to use the method I quoted to disable the launcher. Before I had simply use the "bypass launcher" command in the Steam launch-options, but that, clearly, didn't work as I thought it would. The launcher didn't pop into view any longer when I started the game, but it must've still started/tried to run in the background. Using the command-line I posted in the quoted text up there *really* prevents the launcher from starting up and, thus far, my game's been running flawlessly and my system hasn't crashed on me.
S.
