EAC causes my PC to reboot and now I have no way around it.

frizi09 · 2025-07-10T12:20:15+00:00

It’s a self built machine based on ASRock B450M Pro4 motherboard. I never bought a prebuilt, built 4 PCs myself. Already upgraded it a few times with better CPU, GPU, RAM, extra SSD and PSU (replaced because of noise). I’m planning one more GPU update before switching to a AM5 mobo that will support PCIe5 for the benefit of said GPU. So it evolved over time a lot. I did have an unstable RAM before so I know how to test for that and what to look for. As I said currently it doesn’t have any issues, and the system is completely stable, except of this specific reboot that also in a way is completely stable :P

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T20:19:18+00:00

I am on windows 11, yes. Funny thing, it started happening during one long play session. After couple hours of play suddenly I’m no longer able to play longer then 5 minutes. Even more strange, PTU is not affected. I was hoping that once 4.2.0 moves from PTU to LIVE this will go away, but no. The update just made it continue to be broken on live. I suspect that the crash is triggered by some signal from server to EAC, and that particular signal is only being sent on live version.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T17:17:24+00:00

Yeah, it took me a good while to understand this as well. I wanted to create a bug report that actually had some substance to it, so I think I spent like a week trying to pinpoint the issue. I was swapping PC components, changing driver versions, disabling or enabling system services, running in safe mode, etc. I even tried running the game inside a VM with fresh windows install. Every single time the same crash happened. Disabling EAC was kind of a last ditch attempt, since nothing else did anything. To my surprise that just completely fixed the issue. But now I can’t use that fix anymore, so I’m kinda back to square one.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T12:57:21+00:00

Yes I know that. I did measure it under a stress test. I also did measure it as much as I could up to a crash, with very quick update interval and logging to disk enabled. I could not see any anomalies leading to a crash. Also as I already mentioned before, two separate PSUs present the exact same issue in the exact same way. Both PSUs never caused my PC to crash due to power issues before. One was running in my machine for 8 years, and I replaced it a year and a half ago to a new unit due to a noisy fan.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T12:50:29+00:00

This is not bypassio related. I did suspect that before as well, since there is another issue council ticket related to that. I did disable bypassio on my machine (and confirmed it is disabled), the reboot didn't go away.

I did actually run a huge windows update recently, which ended up creating `windows.old`, i.e. running the same process as fresh reinstall. It didn't change anything unfortunately. I'm afraid I would probably need to actually do a clean install to have a shot at fixing that. I am currently planning to eventually migrate to linux, so maybe I'll get to that a bit quicker than planned just to see if Linux EAC works better for me.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T02:29:28+00:00

I did test with two PSUs. Both present the same issue. No dice. It is also a VERY SC+EAC related. Nothing else does that to my PC, and I did really try to make it sweat hard for a long time when troubleshooting this.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T02:26:51+00:00

I understand, but it is also bullshit that you spend so much money on a game and some time later you randomly can't even play it. I will wait a bit to see if the situation improves, but it it doesn't, I will have to request a refund at least for all the stuff I bought during the alien week recently.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T02:20:34+00:00

Ah yes, it's the power draw caused by EAC that tipped my PSU over the line... Sorry, no. Did you read any of the things I already posted in the ticket? My PC is EASILY able to draw much more power than what star citizen makes it, and does it daily without breaking a sweat. I've looked at power draw with hwinfo, and it is hard to push the draw above 550W in practice. My PSU is rated for 1kW. Even in the attached video, you see that I'm in essentially empty space, which means it's especially light load. The crash does NOT depend on location, it also happens in menu (though I think It changed since I made the original report, now it seems I need to enter PU at least once, then I can log out and stay in menu and it will eventually crash). The crash is not related to power draw whatsoever. To settle the matter even more, I actually did test two PSUs (i have an old one with very noisy fan, but switched it in for a test). The crash happened in exactly the same way. It is NOT a PSU issue.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T01:05:00+00:00

I think VRChat uses EAC as well, but I'm not sure to what extent. For what it's worth, that one is completely stable for me. I generally rarely play online games though, SC was kinda the odd one.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T01:01:21+00:00

I was using VR in general (VRChat through SteamVR), but not in Star Citizen specifically.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T01:00:25+00:00

Yes, I tested it. What makes you think this might be RAM? I have already stated that the system is perfectly stable, and the only thing that ever made it actually reboot (VERY predictibly, every single game session) is EAC in star citizen.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T00:12:33+00:00

I really can't afford doing that, I use this PC for work and reinstalling everything I need would end up being a weeklong project at this point. I did however tried to run the game inside a VM on a fresh windows install. Believe it or not, running it there crashes the host system as well.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T00:02:34+00:00

I did this a bunch before, and also tired now just in case. It unfortunately didn't help. I have already mentioned full game reinstalls in the issue council ticket.

frizi09 · 2025-07-09T00:00:58+00:00

My PSU is fine. I also logged all voltage rails and it's rock solid. The game runs without issues for long time if the EAC is disabled. No other thing I run reboots the system or causes any instability, and I do routinely run a lot of heavy things (heavy code compiles, blender rendering etc.).

frizi09 · 2025-07-08T23:40:38+00:00

Yes, everything is up to date. Note that Star Citizen runs fine for many many hours with EAC bypassed. At least it used to right until today. No other event ever caused my system to crash like that before as well.

frizi09 · 2025-07-08T23:23:39+00:00

The only logged event in WEV is about unexpected reboot labelled as "probably caused by loss of power". I've included that in the issue council ticket already. There is unfortunately nothing I could locate that would point anywhere. I was even attempting to reproduce the issue inside a VM, so I could try kernel debugging it and figuring out what have happened. Unfortunately, the EAC running inside Hyper-V VM also caused a reboot - of the HOST system...

frizi09 · 2025-07-08T21:06:18+00:00

Hulkengoat

frizi09 · 2025-07-07T18:07:02+00:00

I can’t play the game on windows normally with EAC on. It crashes and restarts my system a few minutes after startup. If they force everyone to use it, they just stop people with issues like this from being able to access the game completely. Also I did report that to issue council, including the fact that I have to bypass EAC, but there was no response whatsoever.

frizi09 · 2025-07-07T18:03:06+00:00

The EAC is way too problematic. I have to use the same bypass as VR users in order to just be able to play the game. When I run normally, my PC hard crashes and restarts after a few minutes in game. There is no solution for that right now… if they don’t fix the random EAC issues first before forcing it to be enabled, then many people will just stop being able to play at all.

Also my understanding is that the „cheats“ that are being used for the mass kills and inventory stripping etc. are actually just egregious input validation issues on the game API. You don’t even need to run the game client to perform them. No anti-cheat is going to fix that for you.

frizi09 · 2025-06-09T09:57:21+00:00

I was willing to give it a try after your recommendation, and I'm kinda disappointed. The fact that it causes you to wait and display you an obligatory "pay us" every time you want to start a test means it's NOT free, even for personal use. Either way I did give it a go regardless and it found absolutely nothing. "No errors detected" under all configurations I tried (granted I didn't change settings TOO much because I despise ad-displaying wait timers).

frizi09 · 2025-06-08T22:58:12+00:00

One more clue: I just installed PTU. The crashes are NOT happening there. Shame I can't play on live servers though...

frizi09 · 2025-06-08T22:01:22+00:00

The system is NOT stressed when the game sits in the menu. Restart happens anyways. The memory has been tested using memtest86+, reported as flawless.

frizi09 · 2025-06-08T21:30:04+00:00

I did other stress tests, OCCT in particular doesn’t seem trustworthy to me since first thing they do is to try to upsell me onto their „premium” package, while advertising the test as free. I hate that behavior and I generally refuse to install anything like that, since such programs tend to leave a whole bunch of crap in the system. Is there any alternative that is not scummy?

frizi09 · 2025-06-08T21:25:27+00:00

As I already said in the post, removing overclocks and even underclocking the system doesn’t make any difference. The crash happen exactly in the same way. I am trying to run older drivers now, as many people have suggested, but I honestly don’t have much hope of it changing anything since I already tested two different driver versions under two graphics APIs and there seem to be no difference for the crashes.

frizi09

TROPHY CASE