DayZ was working perfectly fine on October 22 and 23, 2026. I had been playing normally with no crashes or performance issues. On October 24, I tried launching DayZ through the DZSA Launcher, and the game would open to a black screen, stop responding, and eventually freeze my entire computer. The freeze is so severe that I have to hold down the power button to restart my PC.

I tried launching DayZ through the official Steam launcher and directly through DayZ_x64.exe, but the same issue occurred. Sometimes other applications, including Discord and Google Chrome, would also crash or stop responding when DayZ attempted to launch.

Initially, BattlEye displayed the error "Failed to initialize BattlEye Service: Generic Error." After attempting to repair BattlEye, the game continued freezing during startup.

Windows Reliability Monitor also recorded Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) crashes. I received the error "Desktop composition is disabled" with exception code 0x80263001.

I have spent several days troubleshooting and have already tried the following:

• Completely uninstalling and reinstalling DayZ.

• Verifying game files through Steam.

• Clean-installing my NVIDIA graphics drivers.

• Repairing Windows system files using DISM and SFC.

• Resetting DayZ's configuration files.

• Launching without mods and without DZSA.

• Checking Steam and DayZ launcher parameters.

• Disabling Steam and NVIDIA overlays.

• Checking Windows Security and Windows Update history.

• Repairing BattlEye and checking its service.

• Checking Windows Event Viewer and DayZ crash logs.

None of these steps have resolved the issue.

My PC uses an NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card, and every other game I play works normally without crashing. DayZ is the only game causing this problem.

I have attached RPT logs from October 22–23 when the game worked, and October 24–26 when the issue started. The newer logs appear to stop during startup without recording a clear fatal error.

I am looking for assistance identifying what is causing DayZ to hang on a black screen and occasionally freeze my entire PC, especially since the game was working normally immediately before October 24.

1. Open Steam and navigate to DayZ in the game library.

2. Launch DayZ using the official launcher or DZSA Launcher.

3. Select "Play without mods" in the official launcher to rule out Workshop mod conflicts.

4. Click Play and wait for DayZ to launch.

5. The game opens to a black or gray screen and becomes unresponsive.

6. Windows may display "DayZ is not responding." In some attempts, the screen freezes completely, and other applications such as Discord or Chrome also stop responding.

7. Occasionally, the entire computer becomes unresponsive, requiring a forced shutdown by holding the power button.

8. The issue can also be reproduced by launching DayZ_x64.exe directly from the game's installation folder, without using either launcher.

Expected result: DayZ launches normally and reaches the main menu.

Actual result: DayZ freezes during startup, sometimes causing the entire Windows system to become unresponsive.

Frequency: The issue occurs consistently when attempting to launch DayZ. The severity varies between a game freeze and a complete system freeze.

Additional information: This issue began on October 24, 2026. DayZ was working normally on October 22–23. Reinstalling the game, resetting configuration files, and clean-installing graphics drivers have not resolved the problem.