November 29, 2022 edit: Palmtrees suggested I reapply thermal paste to my GPU and it worked! One week and no crashes. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/51473/thread/ongoing-saga-need-help-with-exception-access-viola Hello, I've been working on this for a few weeks and can't figure out what the problem is. I took my PC over to a friend's to play games with my buddy online while I was housesitting for a week. When we started playing Star Citizen it crashed and I got this error in the game log: Exception EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION(0xC0000005) addr=0x00007FF6CC02A482 digest=e687f82d581bedc38a2f41d2945b6903 Run from internal: No Is fatal error: No Is reported bug: No Is GPU crash: No Is Timeout: No Is out of system memory: No Is out of video memory: No PC Specs: Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 19044) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. System Model: Z370 AORUS Gaming 5 BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/06/17 21:46:53 Ver: 05.0000C (type: BIOS) Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.2GHz GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 DirectX 12 GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G 8GB 256-Bit RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform Desktop Memory Model F4-3200C16D-16GVRB Memory: 32768MB RAM Available OS Memory: 32714MB RAM Page File: 8747MB used, 56733MB available Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS DirectX Version: DirectX 12 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled Miracast: Available, no HDCP Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported DirectX Database Version: 1.0.8 DxDiag Version: 10.00.19041.1741 64bit Unicode I found this thread: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/solved-exception-access-violation-0xc0000005/. I didn't have anything overclocked, i.e. RAM, CPU, GPU- not overclocked. However, I checked my bios anyways, XMP was not enabled. My RAM was set to 1.2v and XMP only has one profile for 1.35v as supported by my RAM, so I tried bumping to 1.35v and was able to play SC a full 2 hours without the same crash but the next game night I got the same crash again and it was happening in other games as well, crashing a few minutes into playing. Next I tried memtest64 and was getting errors while testing on all 4 sticks at once so I ran memtest86 on all 4 sticks individually and one in each slot with no errors on any of the sticks or slots. Another group memtest64 test and still got errors. I also installed a performance monitor for temps and everything was fine under load. Other stray thoughts: I bought a dual pack of RAM in 2017 and another in 2019 but made sure to get the exact make and model and from what I can tell they are exactly the same. I considered my RAM unseating but I reseated all sticks after testing so I don't think that is it. AFAIK all drivers are up to date. Please help! I'm not sure where to go from here. Edit: Thanks for all of the help everyone. Playing SC all day today to see if updating the bios solved my issue. Edit 2: Played SC for 3 hours with no crashes. Not confirmation my problem is fixed but a good sign. Edit 3: Over two hours of 7 Days To Die and no crashes. I think I am good. I couldn't get more than a couple of minutes in either game a few days ago. Edit 4: This didn't fix my problem but reapplying thermal paste to my GPU solved my issues thanks to Palmtrees suggestion in my second thread. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/51473/thread/ongoing-saga-need-help-with-exception-access-viola