Resident Evil Requiem PC Crash Guide: Fixing the Fatal D3D and Unhandled Exception Errors
There is nothing quite as terrifying as psyching yourself up for a new survival horror release only to have your desktop jump scare you with a fatal error code.
A subset of PC players are currently discovering that the most aggressive bioweapon in Resident Evil Requiem is the game's own engine. Capcom's RE Engine is usually incredibly stable, but this launch has surfaced a handful of very specific, highly irritating crashes. Whether you are getting kicked out right after the opening cutscene or the game is flatlining the moment you open the graphics menu, the result is the same: you are not playing the game.
I have dug through the error logs and tested the community workarounds to figure out exactly what is causing these engine panics. Before you try to reinstall Windows or throw your graphics card in the garbage, try these specific fixes to get your game stabilized.
Fixing the Fatal D3D Error 24
The most common culprit ruining the opening hours of the game is the fatal d3d error 24 dxgi_error_device_removed 0x887a0005 prompt. This usually happens right after the first cutscene finishes.
This error looks like a hardware failure, but it is actually a VRAM management issue. The RE Engine is essentially trying to push more texture data into your video memory than the PCIe bus can handle, causing the engine to panic and drop the connection to the GPU.
If you are using a card with 8GB or 12GB of VRAM and trying to run High textures with Ray Tracing enabled, you are asking for trouble. Even if the in-game VRAM meter says you are in the green, minor spikes will crash the game.
You need to drop your Texture Quality down to Normal. If that does not stabilize it, turn Ray Tracing completely off. Some players have also reported that capping the maximum framerate to 60 FPS via the Nvidia Control Panel prevents the buffer from overflowing during transition scenes.
The Settings Menu Crash
There is a bizarre bug where simply trying to change your graphics settings in the main menu causes the game to instantly crash to the desktop. This is directly related to how the game handles DLSS and Frame Generation.
If you cannot even open the menu to lower your settings, you have to bypass the UI entirely. Go to the root directory where the game is installed and look for a file named config.ini. Open this file with Notepad. You can manually adjust your settings here, such as setting Frame Generation to "Off" and lowering your texture resolution. Save the file and boot the game. The engine will read the file and launch without forcing you into the broken menu UI.
The Bad Nvidia Driver
Sometimes the problem is not the game, but the software running the hardware. Nvidia released driver version 591.86 recently, and it is causing massive instability for specific GPUs running the RE Engine.
If you are crashing the second the Capcom logo appears or during the initial shader compilation, your driver is likely the culprit. You need to use Display Driver Uninstaller (DDR) to completely wipe version 591.86 from your system. Download and install the previous version, 591.74, directly from Nvidia's archive. Reboot your PC and try launching the game again.
If you are running an AMD card and experiencing similar immediate crashes, try rolling back your driver to version 25.12.1.
A Warning About ReShade and Overclocks
If you are the type of player who immediately installs ReShade to tweak the color grading before even playing the game, you need to stop. The current build of Resident Evil Requiem aggressively rejects the ReShade injection process, causing an immediate crash on startup. You must uninstall ReShade entirely to play the game right now.
Finally, if you have a factory overclock on your GPU or you are manually pushing your memory clocks, dial them back. The RE Engine is incredibly sensitive to unstable memory frequencies. Reducing your memory clock by even 100MHz can be the difference between a hard crash and a smooth playthrough.
If you manage to finally get the game running smoothly and want to actually start surviving, you can read my Resident Evil Requiem beginners guide to get a head start on the nightmare. Let me know if you are hitting any other specific error codes.
