Game crashes upon start up.

Hello,
I've been trying to start up the game since league start and I've been met with a black screen for a few seconds and then the app closes. I am using the steam client.

I have tried a multitude of troubleshooting, including but not limited to:

Clearing download cache on steam
Updating my graphics drivers
Verifying game files via steam
Closing conflicting software such as awakened poe
Running the game as admin
Reinstalling the game
Restarted my pc
Updated PoE to its latest version
Excluded the game from windows firewall
Disabled enhanced audio options

The game was working fine the other day whilst playing standard, the only factor that happened between then and now was I shut off my pc last night (I typically leave my pc on for a few days between uses.)

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

PC specs:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz 4.20 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.9 GB usable)
Storage 466 GB SSD NVMe Samsung SSD 960, 466 GB SSD NVMe Samsung SSD 960
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB), Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 (128 MB)
System Type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

same here, i have posted in 5 topics already, no answer. Still can't execute the game.

lost 8 hours of my life playing a videogame, and this is the result. Wow, maybe i should quit forever ggg. thanks for the realization.

Yep/ Same problem +1
Can't play POE1 at all. Was fine yesterday.
Still waiting for ggg to fix my other bug on POE2...after waiting 2months. .sigh

Same here I am been troubleshooting it for the last 2 hrs and nothing changed

Edit: they dropped a patch that fixed it

"

Same here I am been troubleshooting it for the last 2 hrs and nothing changed

Edit: they dropped a patch that fixed it

Didn't do anything for me unfortunately.

I was in playing league start with no issues for some hours and exited so I could switch over to headphones, which I frequently do after the rest of the house heads to bed.

Now I have the same problem.

Done the gamut of fix attempts from verify integrity, to full reinstall, clearing the documents config files dir, cache dir, updating to the latest nvidia drivers, rebooting, etc. etc. Yes also switched back to the other audio device just to be sure not that also.

If you're in the game, don't exit! lol... If you do I guess its time to wait for the next patch. : (

Some interesting lines from the LatestClient.txt log

2025/06/14 02:36:49 ***** LOG FILE OPENING *****
2025/06/14 02:36:49 3544812 f2498ee7 [INFO Client 5388] [JOB] Irrecoverable Exception Callback: SET
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3544890 f95431e6 [INFO Client 5388] [HTTP2] User agent: PoE release/tags/3.26.0 Windows x64
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3544890 f95431e5 [INFO Client 5388] [HTTP2] Using backend: cURL
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3544906 9fe6088b [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated adapter: NVIDIA TITAN RTX
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545125 9fe5d200 [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated device for adapter: NVIDIA TITAN RTX. Selected feature level: 49408. Max feature level: 49408
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545125 9fe5eec2 [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated output for adapter NVIDIA TITAN RTX of \\.\DISPLAY10
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545125 9fe6088b [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated adapter: NVIDIA TITAN RTX
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545343 9fe5d200 [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated device for adapter: NVIDIA TITAN RTX. Selected feature level: 49408. Max feature level: 49408
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545343 9fe6088b [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated adapter: Microsoft Basic Render Driver
2025/06/14 02:36:50 3545343 9fe5d200 [INFO Client 5388] Enumerated device for adapter: Microsoft Basic Render Driver. Selected feature level: 49408. Max feature level: 49408

...

2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546265 88fcf344 [INFO Client 5388] [ENGINE] Ready
2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546281 665e1faf [INFO Client 5388] [STARTUP] Game Start
2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546515 ca86fcdf [DEBUG Client 5388] Rebuilding UI::Core properties. Current input mode = '1'
2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546703 665e1f88 [INFO Client 5388] [STARTUP] Game in 0.424563 seconds
2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546703 665e1faf [INFO Client 5388] [STARTUP] Device Start
2025/06/14 02:36:51 3546703 4de16f2a [INFO Client 5388] [RENDER] Starting device: DirectX12
2025/06/14 02:36:52 3547031 10dd04f8 [DEBUG Client 5388] [SHADER] Load shader cache: ShaderCacheD3D12
2025/06/14 02:36:52 3547093 665e1faf [INFO Client 5388] [STREAMLINE] Init Start
2025/06/14 02:36:54 3548921 665e1f88 [INFO Client 5388] [STREAMLINE] Init in 1.8281 seconds
2025/06/14 02:36:54 3548921 b40c6a0 [INFO Client 5388] [STREAMLINE] Initialized (Enabled)
2025/06/14 02:36:54 3548921 847c23ac [WARN Client 5388] [D3D12] Failed to load Agility SDK
2025/06/14 02:36:54 3549406 847c3865 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] Found matching adapter using LUID 00000208E8C00C80 (NVIDIA TITAN RTX - NV Surround)
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c2f49 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] SDK Version = Unknown
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c0943 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] GPU type: discrete
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c0949 [DEBUG Client 5388] [D3D12] VRAM size = 23.69 GB
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c0948 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] VRAM limit: 23.69 GB
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c1ba6 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] Shader Model: D3D_SHADER_MODEL_6_2
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c19e7 [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] Feature Level: 12.1
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c270c [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] Wave Lane Count: 32
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551453 847c274a [INFO Client 5388] [D3D12] VRS Supported: false (2x2)
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551671 b40be87 [INFO Client 5388] [STREAMLINE][DLSS]: Loaded version 2.4.10 (NGX: 3.7.10)
2025/06/14 02:36:56 3551671 b40be87 [INFO Client 5388] [STREAMLINE][Reflex]: Loaded version 2.4.10 (NGX: 0.0.0)

...

2025/06/14 02:36:57 3551921 e0a9b589 [CRIT Client 5388] [D3D12] D3D12SerializeVersionedRootSignature failed (-2147024809) The parameter is incorrect.

Having same issue, game was working fine on leaguestart, now after recent micro patch it goes black screen after launch and closes after.

After inspecting logs I can see app is starting Vulkan instead of DX12, even though in production_config.ini its set to DX12: renderer_type=DirectX12 so I guess this is the issue

edit: fixed by removing old config, and finding out that it's now called device_type!
cringe

Having a somewhat similar issue. The game will run on the integrated graphics card (not well) but when I force it to use the high performance card (radeon 7800xt) the game crashes on startup. Anyone know why this would be or how to fix? I've reinstalled the game and updated all gpu drivers. I don't have this issue when running last epoch so it seems specific to POE1.

I had the same issue several hours ago myself, but I never shut down my pc. I got back on poe after I woke up later last night and it loaded fine for the time being, but then when the grinding gear sound occured without the visual picture and was only black screen, I began to worry. Soon I heard the usual music, but was still black screen and also btw during the grinding gear sound, I heard stuttering of the grinding gears. I was a bit concerned it would be a latency issue, but thought nothing of it as aside from steam, I was only running poe. After about 10 seconds or so of music, it would crash on me with no sign of errors and it repeated despite my best efforts to make it work. Keep in mind I was on earlier yesterday for the launch and had no problems, but after a update for poe when I woke up, it just stopped working for me altogether. I don't know what they did in the update, but they need to fix this. Keep in mind I am running on windows 10 atm and not entirely a gaming pc, but I had no issues playing during the kalguur league and the mini league and this problem didn't happen until the update late last night when I tried playing the game again. please deal with the bugs you caused on the updates because I can't for the life of me play the game at all at this point even if I wanted to....thank you ahead of time GGG.

Had the same issue.
I was playing fine at launch.
My game was running with Vulkan

Fixed it by changing

device_type=directx12

to

device_type=Vulkan

Config file location :

C:/User/[You account]/My Documents/My Games/Path of Exile/production_Config.ini