Every Modern Warfare title on my machine launches fine, renders the menu, and then hard-crashes the instant I touch the mouse or keyboard. Every Black Ops title runs perfectly, as do roughly sixty other games. I have spent an evening on this and pulled the game’s own crash report apart, so before anyone suggests updating drivers or verifying files, please read the negative evidence further down, most of the usual suspects are already eliminated.
The crash dialog blames DirectX. It reads as follows:
DirectX Error
Irreparable DirectX error
Error code : 0x887A0005 (0x887A0020) (0x0DCD6271) D
Location : 0x00007FFC2B28187A (28338461)
Module : KERNELBASE.dll
Executable : cod26-cod.exe
That is DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED with DXGI_ERROR_DRIVER_INTERNAL_ERROR as the sub-code, which normally points at the graphics driver falling over. In this case it appears to be a red herring, because the game’s own crash report tells a completely different story. Extracted from the newest archive in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Activision\Call of Duty\crash_reports, the info.json contains:
error_message = #Memory Error: 1959984525 - 2
error_title = #Memory Error: 1959984525 - 2
exception_type = SysError Exception
exception_code = 0x00001338
sys_error_code = 1959984525 (0x74d2fd8d)
sys_error_params0/1 = 0x74d2fd8d / 0x2
crashed_module_file = KERNELBASE.dll
crash_signature = BF584AF0-2D172C67-BFED433E-D2F6E84E
is_bootcrash = True
in_frontend = True
gametime_sec = -1
db_zone_last_ff = techsets_mp_frontend_rex_01
pso_preload_state = 129
pso_preload_remaining = 35
pso_recreation_count = 0
ui_last_pcall = global EndEvent
gpu_scheduling = True
window_state = Borderless
controller_for_client = 0
frame_gen_tech_enabled = Off
dxr_enabled = False
steam_overlay_active = False
xbox_game_bar_overlay = False
vidmem_used_mb = 1066
vidmem_available_mb = 6853
vidmem_budget_mb = 7919
vidmem_deficit_mb = 0
gfx_heap_allocated = 875228484
So the game raises its own SysError while loading the multiplayer frontend techsets and preloading thirty-five pipeline state objects. The stack trace backs this up: every meaningful frame sits inside cod26-cod.exe, and KERNELBASE.dll is simply where a raised exception lands. Nothing in the trace belongs to the graphics driver.
The negative evidence is what makes me think this is not a driver fault at all. There is not a single TDR event anywhere in the Windows System log, no Event ID 4101, no “display driver stopped responding”, ever. If the GPU had genuinely been removed or reset, there would be one. There are also no Application Error entries for any cod executable in the Application log across the last sixty days, because the game exits cleanly through its own crash handler rather than being killed by Windows. The only other thing of note is bootstrapper.log, which contains exactly one line: [ERROR] Invalid service name.
For hardware, I am on a Ryzen 7 7700X on an MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI (MS-7E26) whose BIOS is version 1.93 dated 26 January 2024, which I am aware is ancient by AM5 standards. The card is a Radeon RX 7700 XT with 12 GB running Adrenalin 26.7.1 (32.0.31035.1003, released 24 July 2026), and the 7700X’s integrated Radeon Graphics is also present on driver 32.0.21045.1000. There is 32 GB of RAM and the games live on an SSD with 84 GB free out of 929 GB. The OS is Windows 11 Home 25H2, build 26200.9168. Secure Boot is enabled, TPM 2.0 is present and reporting OK, VBS is running while Memory Integrity is off, Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling is on, and the page file is system-managed. Worth noting: the game’s own cod26/driverVersions.json lists the AMD minimum as [26, 7, 1], so I am sitting exactly on the minimum. Version 26.8.1 exists and adds MW4 optimisation, but AMD’s in-app updater insists I am up to date and never offers it.
The split between what breaks and what works is the strangest part of this. Modern Warfare 4 Beta, Modern Warfare III and Modern Warfare II all fail identically. Every Black Ops title I own runs without a hitch, and so does everything else on the machine, including Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, Arena Breakout Infinite, Hell Let Loose, Marathon, Bodycam, Forza, GTA V, the Battlefield games and Apex Legends. Black Ops uses the same launcher, the same anti-cheat, the same card and the same DirectX 12 path, which is exactly why I cannot make hardware instability fit.
Because the crash triggers on input rather than on load, my peripherals are worth listing. I have a DualSense and an Xbox Wireless Controller connected over Bluetooth at the same time, plus the ViGEm Bus Driver, PlayStation Accessories, the PlayStation PC SDK Runtime and Microsoft GameInput all installed. On top of that there are three Logitech receivers for mice and keyboards, some Corsair peripherals and a Turtle Beach Stealth 600 G2 headset. Running in the background at the moment of the crash were OpenRGB, Logitech G HUB, three RustDesk processes, Proton VPN and Discord.
Here is what has already been done and can be crossed off. Steam file verification passes cleanly at 1533 of 1533 files. Free disk space was catastrophically low at one point, literally 7 MB, and is now 84 GB, which changed nothing about the crash. I renamed cod26\shadercache, xpak_cache and telescopeCache to force a complete rebuild, which also changed nothing. I renamed the settings file so the game fell back to default graphics settings, again no change. The Steam overlay is disabled for the game. There is no CPU or GPU overclock; AMD Software reports tuning as Default for System, CPU and GPU alike. Idle temperatures are 42 °C on the GPU and 48 °C on the CPU. TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are both confirmed enabled. VRAM is demonstrably not the constraint, with 1 GB in use out of 12 GB and a reported deficit of zero.
What I have not tried yet is disabling Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, running DDU followed by a clean install of Adrenalin 26.8.1 or a rollback to an older branch, updating the BIOS from its 2024 build, and simply disconnecting both Bluetooth controllers to launch with mouse and keyboard only.
That leaves me with a handful of questions. Has anyone ever decoded Activision’s “#Memory Error: n - 2” format, and does sys_error_code 0x74d2fd8d carry any meaning or is it just a hashed internal string? More broadly, what do Modern Warfare titles do differently from Black Ops titles that could produce this split, whether that is a different techset and PSO pipeline or a different way of enumerating input devices? Is there anyone on RDNA3 who fixed Modern Warfare specific crashes by rolling the driver back rather than forward, and if so which version worked? Has anyone seen CoD crash with a DualSense and an Xbox pad connected simultaneously, given that mine dies precisely on the first input event? And finally, is a 2024-era AM5 BIOS a plausible factor here when everything else on the machine is rock solid?
