Ark: Survival Evolved is an adventure-action survival video game which was released in the late 2017 and has made its way to almost every platform out there ranging from Linux to Windows to Xbox. The game gained immense popularity after its initial release and is hailed one of the best survival games out there.
Despite its success and expansion, users playing Ark on Windows platform reported several issues with the game. According to user reports and experiments done ourselves, we saw that the game kept crashing randomly in between sessions which not only caused the game to crash but also the entire PC.
What causes Ark: Survival Evolved to Crash your PC?
Most of the games crash whenever they face errors or problems when operating. However, if the game is using your resources and they get affected, your PC might crash as well. This is the case with Ark; the game crashes your PC. Here are some of the reasons why this might happen:
- Bad hardware: Since games like Ark heavily rely on your hardware to play, they might crash if you have bad hardware such as RAM or PSU.
- Mods: If you are running an Ark server, additional mods installed in the application might be one of the causes. Since the game updates every now and then, mods can conflict with the new features.
- Bad drivers: Outdated graphics drivers can cause your game not to run and may crash your game and your PC.
- Missing/corrupt game files: If the installation files for the game are missing or corrupt, the game may fail to launch or crash upon startup.
Before you move on to the solutions, you need to make sure that you have the minimum system requirements for running the game on your computer. Keep in mind that these are the minimum requirements and do not reflect the optimal requirements needed for the game. The requirements are:
- OS: Windows 7 or 8
- Processor: 2Ghz Dual-core 64-bit CPU
- Graphics: DirectX11 Compatible GPU with 1 GB Video RAM
- Hard Drive: 20000 MB available space
- DirectX: Version 11
If you do not meet these requirements, you should upgrade your hardware first before proceeding with the solutions listed below.
Solution 1: Verifying Integrity of Game Files
The very first thing to do when troubleshooting problems with games present in Steam is to verify the integrity of Steam game files. There are a number of cases where the game files on your computer might be corrupt or have missing modules. This tool automatically downloads the latest manifest from the website and compares the files on the manifest with the ones on your computer. If there is any difference, the files are replaced.
- Open your Steam application and click on Games from the top bar. Now select Ark: Survival Evolved from the left column, right-click it and select Properties.
- Once in Properties, click on Local Files category and select Verify Integrity of Game Files.
- Now, wait until the process is complete. Restart your computer after the verification is complete and launch Ark again. Check if the crashing is resolved.
Solution 2: Rolling back/Updating Graphics drivers
If your game files are complete and not damaged, the culprit of your game crashing might be your graphics drivers. If the graphics drivers are not updated to the latest build available, it may cause issues with the running of the game. However, it should be noted that in some cases, installing the latest drivers caused further problems. Hence you have to try two methods; update your drivers to the latest build and see how it goes or try rolling back your drivers.
- Press Windows + R, type “devmgmt.msc” in the dialogue box and press Enter.
- Once in the device manager, navigate to Display adapters and expand the category. Right-click on your graphics driver and select Update driver software.
- Select the first option Search automatically for updated driver software. Windows will now check for latest drivers available on Windows Update.
If you already have the latest drivers installed on your computer, attempt at uninstalling them (if your game worked perfectly before the latest driver software release).
Manually download the version of the driver which worked for your system from the manufacturer’s website and use DDU to uninstall the driver completely before installing the chosen one.
Solution 3: Removing Mods and Reducing Graphics options
If you are running a server for Ark: Survival Evolved, you should disable the mods used in the game. Mods are a great add-on to the game but may cause problems when frequent updates for the game are released. Their settings clash and the game crashes.
Also, you should try reducing the graphics options in the game. Reduce the cloud detail, the viewed distance, shadows etc. Try playing on low graphics settings and see if this solves the crash from happening.
Solution 4: Reinstalling and Checking Hardware
If all three solutions don’t work for you, you can try to reinstall the game on your computer. The reinstall is meant to eliminate the possibility of corrupt or broken installation files on your computer. When you reinstall, Steam will automatically load your user data back onto your game.
- Launch Steam and navigate to your Games Library. Right-click on Ark: Survival Evolved and select Uninstall.
- Restart your computer after the uninstallation and download the game again from Steam.
If even the reinstallation doesn’t work in your case, you should check your computer hardware for problems. We got several user reports where faulty modules such as RAM and PSU caused the PC to crash whenever Ark started using the hardware resources. If you are experiencing the crashing with other resource consuming applications as well, you should check your hardware independently.
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