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Valheim Unity crash error (0xc0000005): what to try

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IsThisGameDown

Last checked

October 18, 2026

Valheim Steam Discussions: "my game keeps crashing due to unit error" ↗

Valheim shows a popup mentioning Unity (some players see error 0xc0000005) and closes, anywhere from 2 minutes to a couple of hours into a session, or freezes and has to be killed.

Also appears as: 0xc0000005, valheim unity crash, valheim unity error, valheim error unity log, crash in deep north, UnityPlayer.dll, valheim keeps crashing unity error, valheim crash after 1.0

Players on Steam Discussions describe a Unity error popup that ends the game after anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 hours, with no mods in several cases. Some lost progress because the crash came before a save. Iron Gate has not commented in the threads we read, and no one has found a confirmed fix.

The one change a player says stopped the crashes is running the game without Vulkan (one self-report, not verified). In a separate Deep North thread the poster found Vulkan made no difference, so treat it as something to try, not a cure.

Valheim worlds are hosted by players, not Iron Gate, so this is a crash on your PC rather than an outage; the steps below are the local changes players are trying.

Fix it, step by step

  1. Note

    No confirmed fix yet; this page will be updated. Iron Gate has not acknowledged the Unity crash in the threads we found, and the Patch 1.0.16 notes (the newest we checked that mention crashes) list a player-list crash and a snowball-terrain crash fix, not a Unity popup or Deep North crash.

    Reported

  2. Run the game without Vulkan (one report)

    If you start Valheim with Vulkan, start it without Vulkan instead (the thread doesn't say how the player switched). One player in the "my game keeps crashing due to unit error" thread (October 16) wrote "Tried running it without Vulkan and have not have a crash since", which is a self-report with no follow-up. Another reply there said Nvidia is unstable on Vulkan if you use Nvidia FPS limiters. A different Deep North thread's poster tested Vulkan and got the same crash, so it won't help everyone.

  3. Cap in-game FPS at 60 and close optimisation software (one report)

    In the Deep North thread (October 13), a reply from MaCarBre suggested capping the in-game FPS limiter at 60 to see whether it changes how often you crash, and making sure no third-party app is optimising Valheim (Adrenaline, Asus Armoury Crate, MSI Dragon Center were the examples), and checking maximum GPU and CPU temperatures after a crash. The poster did not report that this fixed it.

  4. Do a clean graphics driver reinstall with DDU (unconfirmed)

    The same reply recommended a clean driver reinstall with DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) in Windows safe mode, and slightly downclocking an AMD XT-series card. The poster underclocked the GPU and did a clean driver reinstall and still crashed in Deep North, and the thread moved to Discord with no fix posted.

  5. On an Intel 13th/14th gen CPU, update your motherboard BIOS (unconfirmed)

    A reply in the "keeps crashing" thread (October 15) asked everyone to post their specs and, for 13th or 14th gen Intel CPUs, to update the BIOS to the version listed on the motherboard maker's site. A later poster said they hoped this works because the other common fixes didn't, and nobody has reported back that it did.

  6. Note

    A poster in the "Repeated Unity crashes" thread (October 9, error 0xc0000005, crashing after 10 minutes to an hour) said updating drivers, disabling overlays, verifying files, lowering graphics settings and capping the frame rate did not stop it. They mentioned launch options -dx11 or -dx12 and a BIOS update as things they hadn't tried; no one replied that either works.

    Reported

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What people are saying

Notes from players who've hit this one — no time limit, an answer from months ago is still an answer.

  • Nothing reported here yet.
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