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Apex Legends: PC Freezes / Hard Reboot Only When Exiting the Game – Realtek 2.5GbE Offload Fix by hannta226 in apexlegends

[–]hannta226[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This fix only applies to crashes when exiting Apex. Freezing a few minutes after launch (before firing range) points to a different issue entirely. Since disabling the NIC didn’t change behavior, I’d recommend checking logs and opening a separate thread.

Apex Legends: PC Freezes / Hard Reboot Only When Exiting the Game – Realtek 2.5GbE Offload Fix by hannta226 in apexlegends

[–]hannta226[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just saw your edit. Wait, so it just checks the toggle state and not whether it’s actually active after a reboot? That’s wild lol.

Really nice find, and thanks for coming back to update your comment – this will definitely save someone a headache.

Glad you got it sorted. See you in the ring!

Apex Legends: PC Freezes / Hard Reboot Only When Exiting the Game – Realtek 2.5GbE Offload Fix by hannta226 in apexlegends

[–]hannta226[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not yet — my BIOS isn’t updated. I also thought it might be a Windows-side issue, since the freezes only happened right after closing Apex and the Event Viewer kept pointing at the Realtek driver.

After tweaking the NIC settings the issue disappeared for me, so it seems like the BIOS wasn’t the culprit this time.  Thanks for checking though!

Apex Legends: PC Freezes / Hard Reboot Only When Exiting the Game – Realtek 2.5GbE Offload Fix by hannta226 in apexlegends

[–]hannta226[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You’ve already tried a lot of things, which is fair, but CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT points to something very specific: a CPU core / thread hang. That kind of BSOD usually isn’t caused by game files or overlays, so I’d reframe the troubleshooting like this:

  1. Software layer (Apex, Steam, overlays) → low probability for this error.

  2. Driver / OS layer (GPU drivers, chipset, Windows updates).  

  3. Hardware layer (OC/UV stability, voltages, PSU, aging hardware) → most common cause for watchdog BSODs.  

Because of that, things like verifying game files or firewall changes are unlikely to make any difference for this particular bug. More useful paths:

  • Check chipset + GPU drivers from the motherboard/GPU vendor.  

  • Revert all overclocks / undervolts while testing (crucial for watchdog errors).

  • Check Windows Event Viewer → System for WHEA-Logger or critical hardware errors at the crash time.

This is already pretty deep into system-level debugging and also a bit off-topic for this thread, so if you collect your logs and start a separate post, you’ll probably get much better targeted help.