There you go, playing Modern Warfare with your friends and it crashes all of a sudden. Apparently, it’s annoying when games run into issues. But don’t worry, many people are experiencing this Modern Warfare crashing issue as you do. Today, let’s take a look at why it happens and how to fix it.

Quick Guide to Fix Modern Warfare Crashing:

  1. Check the system requirements of Modern Warfare
  2. Update your graphics driver
  3. Repair corrupted game files
  4. Increase the Texture Quality
  5. Turn off NVIDIA V-Sync
  6. Disable in-game overlay
  7. Perform a clean reboot
  8. Set the Game Priority to High
  9. Reinstall the game

The causes of COD Modern Warfare crashing can be attributed to a number of factors. Now please follow the troubleshooting tips carefully until you find the final solution. Note that you don’t have to do all of them; just start with the one you haven’t tried before.

1. Check the system requirements of Modern Warfare

When Modern Warfare keeps crashing, especially when it’s recently installed on your PC, you need to check that your computer has the required hardware. If it doesn’t, or it just meets the minimum requirements, then it’s unlikely to run the game properly as you might expect. To check if your computer supports the game, click to see the system requirements of Modern Warfare.

As you can see from the above screenshot: if you wish to use Modern Warfare with Ray Tracing, high FPS, or high FPS in 4K resolution with Ray Tracing, you’ll need higher specs of hardware. Additionally, if your computer meets the recommended specs, it’s advisable to run Modern Warfare at 60FPS with all options set to Medium.

If you don’t know how to check your PC specs, here’s what you can do:

  1. In the Windows Search box, type System Information and select the matching result.
  2. Once a new window pops up, you can see all of your hardware specifications.
  3. Check if your computer supports Modern Warfare with the feature you’d like to use.

In short, if your computer doesn’t meet the requirements, you’ll only have to give up this game. If it does, try to change some in-game settings as in Tip #4, #5, and #6. Alternatively, you can go through the next tip first.

2. Update your graphics drivers

Basically, when Modern Warfare crashes, one of the first things you should do is update your graphics card driver, since an up-to-date graphics driver always ensures the best gaming performance and fewer bugs.

To update your display card driver, here’s what you can do (please note that the following screenshots are taken on Windows 11, but the instructions work on Windows 10 as well):

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows key and X at the same time, select Device Manager.
  2. Double-click to expand the category Display adapters. Then right-click your graphic card driver and click Update driver (the name of the device can be different on your computer).
  3. Then click Search automatically for updated driver software.
  4. Wait for Windows to find the latest driver available for you.
  5. When the driver update is done, restart your computer for the change to take effect.
  6. Then check and see if the problem is fixed.

If Windows says that it’s already found the latest driver for you, so no newer drivers are found, then you should consider updating your graphics drivers in a different way with the help of Driver Techie.

Its ever-growing driver database allows you to always have access to the latest device drivers that you need. More importantly, Driver Techie simplifies the driver update process, so all it takes is just 3 clicks (for Pro users), and all your drivers are updated.

To use Driver Techie to find you the latest drivers:

  1. Download and install Driver Techie, then launch it.
  2. Click Scan Now.
  3. After the scan, select all the drivers you need to update and click Update All. Then all your drivers will be updated automatically without you having to do anything else.

Please note that Update All is available for Pro subscribers only, otherwise, you can only manually update the driver one at a time. To see how to manually update the drivers one by one, please check this post.

If you’re a Pro user of Driver Techie, and need our technical support to help with the Modern Warfare crashing problem, please feel free to contact <support@drivertechie.com>.

3. Repair corrupted game files

If you are using Steam or Blizzard, ensure that the game files have not been damaged and are functioning properly. If the game files are corrupted, you will not be able to play the game properly and will experience crashing issues.

It is therefore necessary to verify the integrity of game files and to repair them if they are damaged. Here are the steps:

On Steam:

  1. Launch Steam and select Library.
  2. Right-click Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and select Properties.
  3. Click the Local Files tab and select Verify Integrity of Game Files.

On Blizzard:

  1. Open the Battle.net client.
  2. Select Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from the left panel and click the Options button.
  3. Select Scan and Repair from the drop-down menu.
  4. Click Begin Scan and wait until the process finishes.

Now, check if the crashing issue still occurs. If you still cannot run Modern Warfare properly, move on to the next fix.

4. Increase the Texture Quality

According to reports, Modern Warfare will crash if its texture quality is set to Very Low or low. Dev Error 6178 might even pop up sometimes. In order to resolve the problem, it may be helpful to set the texture quality to high or normal. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
  2. Select Options.
  3. Then, select Game Settings > Graphics.
  4. Click the Details & Texture tab.
  5. Select High or Normal under Texture Resolution.

  6. Set Texture Filter Anisotropic to High and set the other settings to Low.
  7. Disable Sync Every Frame (V-sync).

  8. Once changes are saved, re-launch Modern Warfare.

Now, check if the problem is resolved. If not, continue with the next solution.

5. Turn off NVIDIA V-Sync

Activating the V-sync feature on your PC may also be responsible for the crashing issue in Modern Warfare. If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, you can disable this feature in NVIDIA Control Panel to see if it helps.

To do so:

  1. Right-click the blank space on your desktop, and select NVIDIA Control Panel.
  2. From the left panel, click 3D Settings, and then select Manage 3D Settings.
  3. Next, switch to Program Settings and click the Add button.

  4. Go to the following location:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Call of Duty Modern Warfare\ModernWarfare.exe
  5. Click Vertical Sync under the Specify the settings for this program list, and set it to Off.

  6. Click Apply and then re-launch your game.

If Modern Warfare still crashes, proceed with the next method. 

6. Disable in-game overlay

If your hardware is powerful enough, then enabling the in-game overlay for COD Modern Warfare would be a good choice. Otherwise, overlays can conflict with the game files, leading to FPS drops and crashes. In this case, you can try disabling the in-game overlay. There are three ways you can try:

On Discord:

  1. Launch Discord.
  2. Click the Setting icon at the bottom.
  3. Select Overlay from the left panel, then toggle on Enable in-game overlay.
  4. Click Game Activity from the left panel, select Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, then toggle off the in-game overlay.
  5. Restart your computer for changes to take effect.

On Xbox Game Bar:

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and I to open Windows Settings.
  2. Click Gaming > Xbox Game Bar > Turn off the Record game clips, screenshots, and broadcast using the Game bar option.
  3. Restart your computer for changes to take effect.

On Nvidia GeForce Experience:

  1. Launch Nvidia GeForce Experience and click Settings.
  2. Click the General tab, and disable the In-Game Overlay option.
  3. Restart your computer for changes to take effect.

Once you turn off the in-game overlay setting, re-launch Modern Warfare to check if it works properly. If the problem still, please move on to the next solution.

7. Perform a clean reboot

Sometimes third-party software conflicts can cause your Modern Warfare to crash, and multiple programs automatically running at startup may consume the system resources and internet data without your knowledge. In this case, we recommend a clean boot environment for your Modern Warfare.

To do a clean reboot:

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and R together to invoke the Run prompt. Type MSConfig and press Enter.
  2. From the top menu, select the Services tab, check Hide all Microsoft services, and then click Disable all.
  3. Now, click the Startup tab from the top menu and click Open Task Manager. Click each of the tasks and click Disable.
  4. Now, back to the System Configuration page and click the OK button to reboot your computer.
  5. Once rebooted, re-launch your Modern Warfare.

Now, check if the problem persists. If Modern Warfare still crashes, try the next troubleshooting tip.

8. Set the Game Priority to High

There have been numerous reports indicating that setting the game priority in the Task Manager to high helped them to resolve Modern Warfare’s crashing issue. If none of the above tips help, you can try this. Here’s how:

  1. On your keyboard, press Ctrl, Shift, and Esc three keys together to invoke Task Manager.
  2. Click the Details tab. Then, right-click Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.exe, select Set Priority, and choose High.

  3. Click Change Priority if prompted. 

Now, you can re-launch Modern Warfare to see if it runs properly. If it doesn’t, try the next tip.

9. Reinstall the game

If none of the solutions above works, then it’s suggested to reinstall your Modern Warfare since a clean version would be running without such crashing issues. You can first uninstall Modern Warfare on the game platform you’re using, then, proceed with the steps below to clean all remaining game files.

  1. On your keyboard, press the Windows logo key and R together to open the Run prompt, then type %appdata% and hit Enter.

  2. On the pop-up window, delete the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare folder.
  3. Open the Run prompt again and type %localappdata% and hit Enter. Then, find the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare folder and delete all the game files.

  4. Once done, restart your computer.
  5. Launch your game platform and reinstall Modern Warfare.

Hopefully, you will be able to run Modern Warfare now.

So, these are the 9 effective ways to resolve the Modern Warfare crashing issue. We hope you find them relevant and helpful. If you have any follow-up questions, please leave a comment below.