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Update Jan 29: Added information on a workaround that seems to resolve the issue, but it should be taken with caution.
Tongue-in-cheek, many of us wondered what the big Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone update for Season 2 would break. But seriously, it's broken for many of us on PC.
Completely and utterly broken.
Officially, according to the Call of Duty Updates account on X, there is an issue affecting the new Zombies map, The Tomb, for AMD users. But it's far worse than that for some of us.
❗️ #BlackOps6 #ZombiesWe are investigating an increase of crash reports in Zombies from players with AMD GPUs.https://t.co/rHvqVwi72UJanuary 28, 2025
What I'm getting, and it seems a bunch of other people, is a complete BSOD PC crash. Not just in Zombies, but in multiplayer and Warzone, too. I can't get into a game before the PC crashes. I can't run the benchmark or use the firing range before the PC crashes. If I exit the Call of Duty launcher, the PC crashes. But hey, I could buy the new battle pass!
I've been chatting to a few folks on social media who are in the same boat, and we've already narrowed down it isn't exclusive to AMD. Others are using NVIDIA, I'm using Intel Arc. My PC told me my graphics card overclock was at fault, but the issue occurs when it's on stock settings.
One affected user more useful than myself paid attention to the error and reported UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP when the crash happens. Note the word kernel, and what did they update as part of today's big Season 2 launch? Ricochet.
Another helpful X user, KexTheHusky, immediately made the light bulb turn on.
Almost makes me think gathering info from other people what happened is gonna be like the whole crowdstrike debacle, could very well be Ricochet since the stop code mentions the kernel, and Ricochet is kernel-level. I think its something to do with the update to ricochet they didJanuary 28, 2025
Needless to say, this is not official by any means. Nobody has even acknowledged publically that the game is blue screening, let alone that Intel and NVIDIA users are also affected. Both CPU manufacturers are present in the systems I know are having this issue, too, so it really does seem to cover every single option.
But the mention of kernel in an update that introduced a supposed major upgrade of the Ricochet kernel-level anticheat and PCs absolutely pooping the bed would make far too much sense, wouldn't it?
How to workaround the BSOD error in Black Ops 6 and Warzone
There is a potential workaround for this BSOD issue, thanks to the input of some very helpful folks on X in the lengthy discussion thread we've been having on this issue. But I don't necessarily recommend doing it, however, it does seem to work. I've tried it myself and verified that I can indeed now play the game without it blue screening on me.
Open Windows Security, select Device Security from the sidebar, then Core Isolation Details, and turn off Memory Integrity.
Core Isolation is designed to protect the Windows kernel. Whatever this issue introduced in the latest update is affects the kernel, hence assuming it's anticheat related. As such, I don't really recommend this as a fix, but it is a workaround you can try absolutely at your own risk.
I recommend reading up on Core Isolation and Memory Integrity using Microsoft's documentation before you decide if you want to take that risk.
Activision needs to get this fixed, yesterday.
