DuckStation Keeps Crashing? Try These 5 Fixes

DuckStation is a great emulator right up until it isn't, and when it crashes it almost never tells you why. It just closes with no error message, no warning, pretty much nothing. These five fixes cover the most common causes, so find your symptom in the list below and start there.

Which fix is mine? Crashes on startup Crashes when game loads One game crashes Random mid-game crashes File browser freezes Still stuck

Which Fix Is Mine?

• DuckStation closes the second you open it, before anything loads → Fix 1
• DuckStation opens fine but crashes when you try to launch a game → Fix 2
• Most games work but one specific game crashes, or your game scan never finishes → Fix 3
• Games run for a while then crash randomly, no obvious pattern → Fix 4
• The file picker freezes when adding a game folder, or DuckStation closes after a few seconds → Fix 5

Not sure which one fits? Start at Fix 1 and work your way down.

Fix 1: Crashes on Startup

When DuckStation closes before you can do anything at all, there are three things that cause this, so read through whichever one sounds like your situation.

1. You have a controller plugged in.

This one gets people more than you would think. Unplug it and try opening DuckStation again, if it opens, that was the entire problem. To fix it for good: open DuckStation without the controller connected, go to Settings → Controllers, and under Global Settings uncheck Enable SDL Input Source and check Enable DInput Input Source instead. Close DuckStation, plug the controller back in, then reopen it.

2. DuckStation closes silently with no warning at all.

It is missing a file it needs from Windows to run. Google "Visual C++ Redistributable download," go to Microsoft's official page, and download the x64 version, not x86 or ARM. Install it and try again.

3. Windows shows a warning about the app.

Click More info then Run anyway. That is a standard Windows trust prompt and not a virus warning, as long as you downloaded DuckStation from the official site. If your antivirus keeps blocking it, add DuckStation to its exclusion list.

Mac users need macOS 13.3 (Ventura) or newer. DuckStation will not open at all on older versions.

Fix 2: Crashes When a Game Tries to Load

DuckStation opens fine, you pick a game, and then it crashes before the game actually starts. Nine times out of ten this is the graphics renderer not getting along with your computer, and switching it takes about thirty seconds to fix!

If you already know what graphics card you have, skip this part. If not, press Windows + R, type dxdiag, hit Enter, and click the Display tab. The card name is right at the top and will say something like "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060" or "AMD Radeon RX 6600" or "Intel UHD Graphics."

Do this: Go to Settings → Graphics and change the Renderer based on your card:

• NVIDIA or AMD: Try Vulkan first, then Direct3D 11 if that crashes
• Intel: Try OpenGL first
• Mac: Use Vulkan — Metal crashes on many Mac setups

Launch a game after each switch to test.

If switching renderers does not fix it, update your GPU drivers from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel's website directly. Do not use Windows Update for this as those versions are almost always behind, and a driver that is six months out of date will cause exactly this kind of crash without any other explanation.

Also turn off any visual filters or shaders if you have them on because these can cause crashes when games change screens.

Fix 3: One Specific Game Crashes (or the Scan Freezes)

Everything else works fine but one game crashes when you try to load it, or DuckStation freezes partway through scanning your game folder and never finishes. A damaged game file is what causes this the vast majority of the time.

To scan your game folder, go to Settings → Add Game Directory and point it to wherever your games are stored. DuckStation scans it automatically. If it freezes before finishing, something in that folder is stopping it.

Do this: DuckStation will not tell you which file caused the freeze, so you have to find it by process of elimination. Move half your games out of the folder and try scanning again, if it finishes, the bad file is in the half you removed. Keep splitting until you find it, then remove it and re-add everything else. It sounds tedious but it's faster than it looks and it just simply works.

Once you have found the bad file, you need a fresh copy of it. If you own the disc, re-copy it to your computer using ImgBurn, which is free. Just insert the disc and it will create a new working file. If you downloaded it, delete it and download it again, because partial or interrupted downloads are one of the most common ways game files get corrupted in the first place.

If no games load at all and not just one, check your BIOS first. Go to Settings → BIOS and make sure a file is actually listed there. If it is blank, DuckStation cannot run anything at all. You need a BIOS file copied from a real PS1 console, and once you have it, drop it into the bios folder inside your DuckStation directory, then point DuckStation to it in the BIOS settings.

Playing a European (PAL) game that keeps crashing? It may need a .sbi file placed in the same folder as the game. Some PAL titles will not run without one.

Fix 4: Random Crashes During Gameplay

The game runs for a while and then just crashes without any warning. No pattern, no trigger, nothing. This usually means a setting is conflicting with your hardware, or a cached file has gone bad somewhere along the way.

Do this first: Go to Settings → Graphics and click Restore Defaults in the bottom right corner. This puts your graphics settings back to default. If the crashes stop, something in your graphics settings was the cause, so turn things back on one at a time until it breaks again and you will find it. You can also try clicking Safe Mode in the bottom left corner, which launches DuckStation with all enhancements turned off at once.

If that did not help, the next thing to try is clearing the shader cache. First, find your DuckStation folder — which one it is depends on how you have it set up:

• DuckStation is a folder on your Desktop or somewhere you unzipped it: Open that DuckStation folder, then open the Documents folder inside it. Not your Windows Documents folder — the one sitting right next to the DuckStation .exe
• You installed DuckStation through a setup file: Press Windows + R, type %USERPROFILE%\Documents\DuckStation, and press Enter
• If neither of those works: Press Windows + R, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\DuckStation, and press Enter

Once you are in the right folder, look for one called shader_cache and delete it. If it is not there, a corrupt cache is not your problem, skip this and move on to the overheating check below. A lot of people spend time hunting for this folder and it just does not exist on their setup, which means the cache was never the issue.

If it is there, delete it and reopen DuckStation. It rebuilds automatically and takes about a minute.

On Linux: ~/.local/share/duckstation/

If the crashes only happen after long sessions or with high graphics settings turned on, your computer may just be overheating under the load. Try lowering the internal resolution under Settings → Graphics and see if that changes anything.

Fix 5: File Browser Freezes or App Gets Blocked

DuckStation opens, but the window for adding your game folder locks up completely. Or the whole app just closes a few seconds after opening without doing anything at all. Try these one at a time and open DuckStation after each one to see if it fixed it:

1. Add DuckStation to your antivirus exclusion list
2. Pause any cloud sync tools like OneDrive
3. Right-click the DuckStation executable and select Run as administrator

If the file browser specifically is what is freezing and not the whole app, the cause is a program that adds extra options to your right-click menu in Windows Explorer. These are called shell extensions, and two confirmed ones that cause this are OldNewExplorer and ROM Properties. If you have either of those installed, that is almost certainly what is happening. Disable them and restart DuckStation.

Linux on Wayland: switch to an X11 session and try again. DuckStation does not load correctly on Wayland in a lot of setups.

Still Crashing?

If none of the fixes above worked, the next step is turning on logging so you can actually see what is failing. I know that sounds more complicated than it is. Here is how:

1. Go to Settings → Advanced and turn on Log to file
2. Reproduce the crash
3. Find your DuckStation folder and open duckstation.log:
   • Portable or unzipped install: Open the Documents folder inside your DuckStation folder — not your Windows Documents, the one next to the .exe
   • Standard install: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\DuckStation
   • If neither works: %LOCALAPPDATA%\DuckStation
4. Scroll to the bottom of the log and look for any lines with "failed" or "error" in them
5. Copy those lines and search them on the DuckStation GitHub or r/duckstation

Linux: ~/.local/share/duckstation/duckstation.log

One of these five fixes solves almost every DuckStation crash. Match the symptom, apply the fix, and you are back in the game. Experiencing stuttering too? Check out my guide here for more quick fixes.