Summary
so this has been going on since chapter 7 launched back in feb/march and i’m at my absolute limit with this. my pc fully hard resets every time i play fortnite. no bsod, no error sound, no warning, just instant black screen and i have to power cycle to get my system back. happens completely randomly, sometimes 10 minutes in sometimes 40 minutes in.
specs: ryzen 5 7500F, RX 9070, 32GB DDR5, ASUS TUF B650M, windows 11
here’s the thing that makes this actually insane:
it was doing this on my RTX 3070. i thought it was the nvidia drivers since event viewer was showing nvlddmkm Event ID 14 every crash. did a full DDU wipe, reinstalled drivers, still crashed. did it again, still crashed. eventually swapped out the 3070 entirely for an RX 9070. completely different GPU, completely different driver stack, AMD instead of nvidia.
still crashes. identically.
so it’s not the GPU. it’s not the drivers. something else is killing my system specifically in fortnite.
what i’ve actually tried:
-all the basic stuff (verify game files, clear cache, windows update, etc.)
DDU clean wipe multiple times on both nvidia and AMD drivers
multiple clean windows reinstalls including stable 24H2
full EasyAntiCheat uninstall and reinstall via admin command prompt using the actual product ID (95e760e6a6a447c28dc50db3e78d060f)
EAC verify-installation returns exit code 0 so it’s installed correctly
disabled memory integrity and core isolation entirely
updated BIOS to latest version
physically inspected PCIe slot, no damage
ran Furmark, 3DMark, and played minecraft for hours — zero crashes, completely stable
enabled kernel crash dumps via registry — system dies too fast to even write a MEMORY.DMP file
checked event viewer after every crash
what event viewer actually shows:
every single crash has the exact same sequence. EasyAntiCheat_EOS kernel driver (version dated april 27 2026) loads successfully, then a few minutes or up to 40 minutes later Kernel-Power Event ID 41 fires. that’s it. no GPU driver errors, no amdkmdag entries, nothing. just EAC loads then system dies.
the fact that it can’t even write a crash dump means the system is dying so hard and so fast that windows never gets a chance to run the crash handler. that’s not a normal crash. that’s something killing the system at a level below the OS, like a machine check exception or a DMA fault.
and before anyone says hardware:
furmark pushes my GPU way harder than fortnite ever does. ran it for an hour, completely fine. 3DMark, fine. minecraft, fine. the only thing that crashes my system is fortnite. if it was hardware it would show up everywhere.
what epic support said:
“contact your hardware manufacturer”
i built my pc.
genuinely asking if anyone else has been hitting this since chapter 7 especially if you’ve tested on multiple GPUs. i have months of event logs if anyone wants to dig into them.
if anyone wants me event viewer logs im happy to upload them
UPDATE:
Claude showed me that each fortnite log file ends this way when it crashes:
GPU/GameThread hitch ~95-100ms
GameThread stalls 300ms waiting on STAT_EventWait
HttpManagerThread stalls ~390ms
ScreenSaverInhibitor stalls 600ms-1086ms
[log ends = system dies]
Please select what you are reporting on:
Creative
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Other
Steps to Reproduce
I genuinley do not know.
Expected Result
Plays normally.
Observed Result
Crashes without display output, needs hard reset to fix.
Platform(s)
PC
Island Code
Everything.