Crashes on PC are almost always one of a handful of common causes. Work through these roughly in order — each one fixes a meaningful share of reported crashes.
1. Update your graphics driver
An outdated GPU driver is the single most common cause of random crashes in demanding games. Update through your GPU manufacturer’s official tool (NVIDIA App, AMD Software, or Intel Arc Control) rather than Windows Update, which lags behind.
2. Verify your game files
Through Steam: right-click Elden Ring → Properties → Installed Files → Verify Integrity of Game Files. This re-downloads any corrupted or missing files, which is a common cause of crashes that happen at the same point every time (a specific loading screen or area).
3. Remove all mods before troubleshooting
If you use any mods (including simple ones like FPS unlockers), disable all of them first. Game updates routinely break mods that worked fine before, and a broken mod is one of the most common crash causes for PC players specifically.
4. Check for overheating
Crashes that happen after 20–30 minutes of play, especially during demanding areas, often point to thermal throttling rather than a software issue. Monitor your CPU and GPU temperatures during a play session — if either is consistently hitting the high 80s°C or above, cleaning dust from your case and reapplying thermal paste (on older builds) is worth doing before anything else.
5. Rule out background software
Overlay software (Discord, GeForce Experience/NVIDIA App overlay, RGB control software) is a common source of conflicts in demanding games. Temporarily disable in-game overlays one at a time to identify the culprit rather than disabling everything at once.
6. Check your page file / virtual memory settings
If your PC has less than 16 GB of RAM, a too-small Windows page file can cause crashes in memory-intensive open-world games. Set it to “System managed size” rather than a small fixed value if you’ve customized it.
If nothing above works
Consistent crashes despite the above usually point to unstable hardware — most often a CPU or RAM overclock that isn’t fully stable. If you’ve overclocked anything, reset to default clocks and see if the crashes stop before assuming it’s the game.
