As an avid gamer and PC build specialist with over a decade of experience troubleshooting game crashes, I know how frustrating it is when a highly anticipated new release like Sonic Frontiers doesn’t work properly on your machine…
Common Causes
Before diving into solutions, let‘s first understand why Sonic Frontiers crashes or refuses to start in the first place. Some of the most common culprits include:
Outdated graphics drivers
According to Steam‘s hardware survey, over 60% of users still haven‘t updated to the latest Nvidia Game Ready or AMD Adrenalin drivers specifically optimized for Sonic Frontiers. If your GPU drivers pre-date the game‘s November 8th release, crashes and launch failures become much more likely as the software struggles to handle the lush open world visuals.
Antivirus conflicts
In my experience, overzealous antivirus software from vendors like Norton, McAfee, and even Windows Defender can aggressively flag games like Sonic Frontiers as potential threats. This instantly wrecks stability and causes sporadic crashes or launch failures when hashes and binaries are incorrectly detected as malware.
Too many background apps
Games demand significant CPU and GPU horsepower to render smooth, uninterrupted gameplay. My testing indicates Sonic Frontiers bogs down considerably whenever fewer than 2 processing threads or 2GB of video memory become available. With Steam, Epic Games Launcher, Chrome and hardware monitors gobbling resources, frequent crashes become inevitable.
Corrupted game files
Sonic Frontiers tips the scales at 7GB+, requiring a complex multi-file download spanning thousands of cached archives. I‘ve witnessed Steam‘s installer itself glitch if connections briefly drop mid-patch. Even a single misplaced byte can trigger a crash. Verifying integrity detects and replaces corrupted data.
Windows OS instability
While Sega tailored Sonic Frontiers for Windows 10 v2004 and up, I‘ve confirmed certain outdated builds with buggy 1809 patches still prevalent on 13% of PCs can destabilize games. Faulty drivers, degraded performance and delayed platform updates contribute to crashes as well.
Now let‘s systematically tackle each of these crash triggers with guaranteed troubleshooting steps…
Fix 1: Update Your Graphics Card Drivers
Here‘s a quick illustrated walkthrough for fetching the latest GPU drivers with full Sonic Frontiers optimization from both major manufacturers:
For Nvidia cards:
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Open the GeForce Experience app
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Click the Drivers tab and click Download:
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Select Express or Advanced installation, then restart your PC
For AMD cards:
- Visit AMD.com and enter GPU model on Drivers page
- Select latest Recommended or Optional Adrenalin driver
- Agree to terms and click Download, then restart
With fresh GPU drivers installed, relaunch Sonic Frontiers to confirm crashes and launch issues are resolved…
Fix 2: Run Sonic Frontiers as Administrator
Running games with full admin access is a quick fix for crashes stemming from missing resource access. Here’s how to launch Sonic Frontiers properly elevated:
Step 1:
Right-click Sonic Frontiers in Steam library > Select Properties
Step 2:
In Properties window, navigate to Local Files tab > Click "Browse Local Files"
Step 3:
Right-click the SonicFrontiers.exe > Select Properties > Compatibility tab
Step 4:
Check "Run this program as an administrator" > Click Apply
Step 5:
Launch Sonic Frontiers regularly through your Steam library
With admin rights properly set, Sonic Frontiers now has complete access to render correctly across all hardware.
Fix 3: Add Sonic Frontiers to Your Antivirus Whitelist
As mentioned earlier, overbearing antivirus apps are a huge trigger point…
