Horizon Zero Dawn Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the popular action role-playing video games that has been developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2017. It’s available for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 platforms. Meanwhile, some of the affected players are reporting that the Horizon Zero Dawn game is literally crashing at startup, won’t launch or lags with FPS drops, etc. If you’re also experiencing a similar kind of issue then check this troubleshooting guide to fix it.

We really can’t deny that most of the Windows PC version games come with plenty of bugs or errors that players can get while launching or during the gameplay mostly. Whereas several online multiplayer games suffer from server-related issues as well. Even though developers come up with a couple of patch fixes, these mentioned issues can be found on multiple instances and you really can’t help with it. The only thing you can do is to simply troubleshoot the issue by performing some of the common steps.

Horizon Zero Dawn Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

There are plenty of Horizon Zero Dawn PC players are getting irritated due to some other multiple issues like graphical glitches, audio issues, connection time out, can’t connect to the server, stuttering, performance drops, and more. So, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into it.

Why Does Horizon Zero Dawn Keep Crashing?

Here we’ve provided some of the possible reasons behind the crashing of the Horizon Zero Dawn game on your Windows PC/Laptop.

• Maybe your PC configuration isn’t capable to meet game requirements. Have any doubt? Check below for system requirements.
• Either your game files are missing or corrupted.
• Your Windows OS or graphics driver version isn’t updated.
• Maybe the DirectX version isn’t updated.
• The game version or the client version is outdated.
• Maybe the background running services are causing issues.
• Most probably, Windows Firewall or Antivirus program is preventing the game to run properly.

Minimum System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bits
• Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K@3.3GHz or AMD FX 6300@3.5GHz
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 (3GB) or AMD Radeon R9 290 (4GB)
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 100 GB available space

Recommended System Requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bits
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K@3.5GHz or Ryzen 5 1500X@3.5GHz
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 100 GB available space

Horizon Zero Dawn Crashing at Startup, Won’t Launch or Lags with FPS drops: Fix

Now, without wasting any more time, let’s jump into the steps below. Keep in mind that both the Nvidia and AMD graphics drivers are well optimized for the Horizon Zero Dawn game. So, if in case, you haven’t updated your graphics driver yet, do this first.

1. Update Graphics Drivers

If you’re using the Nvidia graphics card then update the GeForce Experience app on your PC from the Nvidia official site here. But if you’re using the AMD graphics card on your system, then update the latest AMD Drivers from here.

2. Disable Steam Overlay

• Open Steam on your Windows.
• Head over to the Settings > Click on the In-Game option.
• Click on the checkbox to disable “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game“.
• Once the checkbox mark is removed, click on OK.

3. Adjust Discord Settings

• Launch Discord > Click on User Settings.
• Select Voice & Video from the left sidebar.
• Scroll down a bit and click on the Advanced.
• Next, disable OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco System, Inc.
• Then disable Enable Quality of Service High Packet Priority.
• Now, go to Overlay.
• You can also turn off the in-game overlay.
• Next, head over to Appearance.
• Go to Advanced.
• Disable Hardware Acceleration.
• Once done, restart the system.

4. Adjust Nvidia Control Panel Settings

• Click on Adjust image settings with preview under 3D settings.
• Select Use the advanced 3D image settings.
• Next, launch the Nvidia Control Panel.
• Click on Manage 3D settings > Go to Global Settings.
• Additionally, you can also adjust some of the other options:
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Enable Threaded Optimization
  • Use Maximum Performance for Power Management
  • Turn off Low Latency Mode
  • Set Texture Filtering Quality to Performance mode

5. Change AMD Control Panel Settings

• Go to Global Graphics.
  • Turn off Radeon Anti-Lag
  • Turn off Radeon Boost
  • Use Application settings for Anti-Aliasing Mode
  • Set Anti-aliasing Method to Multi-sampling
  • Turn off Morphological Filtering
  • Disable Image Sharpening
  • Turn off Anisotropic Filtering
  • Use Performance mode for Texture Filtering Quality
  • You can also enable Surface Format Optimization
  • AMD Optimization for the Tesselation Mode
  • Wait for V-sync – Turn it off
  • Use AMD optimization for the Shader Cache
  • Disable OpenGL Triple Buffering
  • Turn off Maximum Tesselation Level
  • Set Graphics for the GPU Workload
  • Turn off the Radeon Chill
  • Disable Frame Rate Target Control

6. Verify Game Files via Steam

The Horizon Zero Dawn gamers on Steam client can follow the below steps:

• Open the Steam Library by logging into the account
• You can find the Horizon Zero Dawn game there
• Right-click on the game and click on Properties
• Select the Local Files tab
• Then click on Verify Integrity of game files
• Wait for the process and then restart the game to check whether the issue has been fixed or not

7. Uninstall Recent Windows 10 Update

A couple of days ago, Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 10 with KB4535996. So, this particular cumulative update for Windows 10 is quite buggy and causing so many errors or problems.

• Go to Start menu > Click on Settings
• Next, go to Update and Security
• Click on View update history
• Now, if you can see that there is an update having KB4535996 has been already installed. Make sure to uninstall it.
• Here you will see Uninstall updates option on the top of the page.
• Click on it and select the mentioned cumulative update version.
• Right-click on it > Select Uninstall.
• It may take some time to delete that update and your system may restart automatically.
• Have some patience and you can also manually reboot your Windows PC (if required).

8. Remove Temporary Files

• Press Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the RUN program.
• Now, type %temp% and press enter.
• You will get a bunch of temporary files on a page.
• Select all files by pressing Ctrl + A on the keyboard.
  Next, press Shift + Delete on the keyboard to remove all the files.
• Some times some of the temporary files can’t be deleted. So, leave them as it is and close it.

9. Set Default CPU and Graphics Speed

As most of the users always want to use ultra-high performance from the CPU and GPU from the very first day. So, most of the users either buy an overclocked version or manually increased the overclocking speed. So, if you’ve also overclocked your GPU speed and after doing that you’re experiencing bottleneck or lagging or crashing related issues, just set it to default mode.

You can also use the MSI Afterburner tool or Zotac firestorm application in order to lower the clocking speed. Once done, you can run the Horizon Zero Dawn game to check whether it’s crashing at startup or not.

That’s it. We hope this guide was useful to you. You can comment below for any queries.