VRC Freezes constantly for minutes at a time
Star 410
VRChat on Desktop (non-VR) intermittently hard-freezes for long periods (30s–several minutes), then recovers without crashing. Freezes also occur reliably on exit. During freezes, the Windows Volume Mixer shows no active applications, then repopulates when VRChat recovers. After recovery, logs show large batches of analytics events flushing (e.g. repeated AmplitudeAPI: upload payload size too large warnings), suggesting events accumulated while the main thread was stalled.
This appears to be a Unity main-thread stall on a blocking Windows system call, not an audio routing issue or crash.
Environment
-Desktop mode only (no SteamVR, no headset connected)
-Windows 11, desktop PC
-Current VRChat live build (issue began after a recent update)
Repro Steps
-Launch VRChat in Desktop mode
-Join any world
-Wait 10-30s or attempt to exit VRChat
-Observe hard freeze (UI/rendering fully stops)
-App eventually recovers on its own (or requires force-close if exiting), but then refreezes after another 15s
Observed Behavior
-Complete freeze (no “Not Responding” dialog)
-Windows Volume Mixer shows no apps during freeze
-Voicemeeter show audio correctly from other applications throughout, and only VRChat freezes not the rest of the PC
-VRChat later resumes and flushes many analytics events
-Freezes happen while idle and on exit
What Has Been Ruled Out
-Audio routing/drivers (Voicemeeter, VB-Cable, Focusrite, Realtek) --> tried every combination of uninstalls and disables known to man
-Audio enhancements / Sonic / Nahimic / A-Volute (removed at driver-store level)
-Windows Audio service (restarts cleanly but does not unfreeze VRChat)
-VR devices (since it happens without them or Virtual Desktop even around)
Notes
-Audio reinitialization and analytics warnings appear to be secondary effects after recovery, not the trigger. The empty Volume Mixer during freezes suggests VRChat never completes session registration while stalled.
-This crash was consistent on the beta branch too, and has been happening since about mid November so it's not just this build.
Sorry for using AI for this summary, but I've been troubleshooting this for 5 hours this evening, and cumulatively something like 25 hours - plus all the time I've wasted with it not working so I'm just too exhausted to write it all up by hand.
Sometimes the bug just won't occur, or will occur after a totally random delay (can be hours), and sometimes it will recover after a freeze and be fine. No idea.
Send help.
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The_Pr0gram
I am having an identical issue. I have done everything as far as re installing my OS.
Here is the list of things I have gone through.
- I have ruled out registry issues with the stuff VRC stores in there (wiped everything)
-I have gone through a ton of VRC log files looking for a pattern at I can't seem to find one.
- Wiped all VRC cache data and let it rebuild everything.
- Nothing shows up in event viewer or reliability monitor
-EAC seems to be blocking my attempts at trying to generate proper dump files
-It's not windows defender at least for me
- Vrc beta dose the same thing
- I have also tried to force the game into dx11 and dx12 no difference
I am also on a higher end pc 7950x3d with and rtx 4090 with 128GB of ram. My OS is on a gen 4 nvme and my game is on a different gen 4 nvme if that would do anything idk
Star 410
The_Pr0gram I have no solutions or hope for you but I'm just happy I'm not alone T.T
The only 'workaround' I've found it that when it crashes, you just have to leave it running to crash and recover over and over until it becomes stable again (can take 30m, can take 3+ hours).
Then you get a random amount of working time again.
Woohoo!
The_Pr0gram
Star 410 if you use the cmd script vrc has on there website to clear all game data it works for a while after that. The tool love under there "crashing troubleshooting stuff"
You have to resign in everytime, and after you close the game it starts crashing agian. So you end up reruning the tool alot. I also tryed pulling ram out of my pc just to see and that did nothing.
Star 410
The_Pr0gram I've done the clearing all game data a number of times without the script and it never made a difference... But I can try it with that too if it buys some time!
Thanks for the heads up.
Star 410
The_Pr0gram Did you ever find any solution? I'm still lost
Docteh
so just to be clear, you join a vrchat world and after 30 seconds the whole pc is basically stalling?
what does the task manager show when this is happening? my first guess is that the OS drive is getting overwhelmed. might be a spinning disk, might be something else
Star 410
Docteh Only VRC freezes. Task manager shows no undue resource allocation in either CPU/GPU or RAM. I'm on a 4090 7950X3D w 64GB so it's definitely not a limitation issue, especially since when the bug randomly doesn't happen I have no problems for many hours at a time.
I also use the same main SSD with both the OS and VRC on it for many other things and have no issues.
Unity's main thread gets stuck waiting for something that hasn't resolved yet, and freezes everything during.