UE 5.7 Freezes at 74% During Plugin Initialization – Launches Only If Plugins Folder Is Removed (Windows 11 / RTX 3060)
Hello,
I am experiencing a critical startup freeze in Unreal Engine 5.7 (5.7.0 / 5.7.1 / 5.7.3).
The engine consistently freezes at approximately 74% during “Loading Plugins” before the editor window appears.
Key Behavior
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The freeze happens even when:
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Launching without a project
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Creating a brand-new blank project
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The plugin shown at freeze varies between launches (not fixed).
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No crash dialog appears.
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The engine becomes “Not Responding”.
Important Technical Observation
If I manually delete or rename the Engine/Plugins folder, UE 5.7 launches successfully.
However:
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The editor runs without plugins (as expected).
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As soon as the plugins are restored, the engine freezes again at ~74%.
This strongly suggests the issue is related to the plugin initialization subsystem in UE 5.7, not to a specific project or third-party Marketplace plugin.
System Specs
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OS: Windows 11
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RAM: 32 GB
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GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060 (12GB)
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Drivers: Clean installed
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UE 5.6: Fully functional on the same machine
Troubleshooting Already Attempted
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Clean reinstall of UE 5.7
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Engine file verification
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Deleting DerivedDataCache
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Launching with
-dx11,-norhithread,-noshadercompile -
Removing Marketplace plugins
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Clean GPU driver install
None resolved the issue when plugins are present.
Given that UE 5.6 works perfectly and 5.7 consistently fails under identical conditions, this appears to be a regression in the 5.7 branch.
Has anyone encountered similar behavior?