Call of Duty (COD) Black Ops Cold War (BOCW) – Fix Stuttering and Freezing

COD Black Ops Cold Wars (BOCW) stuttering and freezing fix – Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and published by Activision. It is the sixth Black Ops title and is also the direct sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops that was released in 2010. The game features new and returning Multiplayer game modes, as well as maps that accommodate both the traditional 6v6 format, as well as larger 12v12 combat. It is also bringing the extremely popular COD Zombies and features a new storyline titled “Dark Aether” which expands on the original Aether story, concluded in Black Ops 4, while also tying to the main narrative of the campaign.

Now that the basic summary about the game is out of the way, lets talk about the performance of the game. People are complaining about micro stutters and freezes in the game. And the majority of the people who are experiencing these are low-medium end gamers. That is why I decided to come up with a basic guide that will show you some simple tweaks that you can try in order to fix the stuttering and freezing issues in COD BOCW.

Call of Duty (COD) Black Ops Cold War (BOCW) – Fix Stuttering and Freezing

The obvious steps

Before you move further into the guide make sure you take a look at the minimum and recommended requirements of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. And also download the drivers optimized for Cod BOCW.

You can check out the system requirements from here. Nvidia users can download the latest drivers from here or via GeForce Experience. AMD users can download the latest drivers from here.

Best Graphics Settings for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War

We are still fiddling with the graphics settings of Black Ops Cold War. We will update this article as soon as we find the find best combination that will make the game run without any stuttering or freezing on our mediocre gaming rig. Here are the specifications of our test rig:

• CPU : Intel i3 9400F
• GPU : Zotac GTX 1060
• RAM : 16GB DDR4 3000mhz
• OS : Windows 10 64-bit (Version 2004)
• HDD : 1 TB 7200 rpm
• Monitor Resolution : 1920×1080
• Refresh Rate : 144hz
• Driver : GeForce Game Ready Driver v456.71 [Release date : 10/07/2020]

Guide to best graphics settings for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War

Install the latest build of Windows 10

Treyarch recommends that you play the game on the latest service pack of Windows 10 in order to get the best performance. Microsoft is known for pushing a ton of updates for Windows. Some end up being good while some end up causing a lot of performance issues. Fortunately, the latest build of Windows 10 is probably the most stable version of Windows we had in a while. So update your OS to the latest version.

Here is how to update:

1. Go to you Windows Settings
2. Click on Update & Security
3. Click on Check for updates
4. Wait until all the updates are installed
5. Restart your PC

Set the right Graphics Processor (For Laptops with Nvidia Graphics Cards)

If your laptop features a Nvidia graphics card inside then you need to make sure your laptop is using that instead of the low powered integrated one.

1. Launch Nvidia Control Panel
2. Click on Manage 3D settings located on the left side
3. Click on the Program Settings tab
4. Under “Select a program to customize” select Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
5. If you don’t see the game on the list then click on the Add button and another list will appear
6. If you still cannot spot the game then you need to add the .exe file manually.
7. Click on Browse
8. Locate the folder where you have installed the game
   
9. Select the executable file or the .exe file which in this case should be Black Ops Cold War Launcher.exe
10. Once you have successfully added the game, you will then see the program settings become available for the game
11. Now set “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program” to “High-performance NVIDIA processor”

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling

If you have the latest build of Windows 10 (2004) then you should make use of the brand new feature called hardware-accelerated gpu scheduling. If you have a decent graphics card then you might actually benefit from this. Here is how to turn it on:

1. Go to Windows 10 settings
2. Click on System
3. Select the Display tab on the left
4. Scroll down and you will notice an option called Graphics Settings at the bottom
5. Click on it
6. Turn on Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling
7. Restart your PC

Disable Nvidia GeForce Experience Overlay (For Nvidia users)

Recently I have noticed that a lot of Nvidia services would pop up whenever I turn on the Nvidia In-Game Overlay. You won’t realize until you check properly that there are a lot of these services and though individually they are consuming very little percentage of your CPU, when you combine them it is a hefty chunk. So try turning it off.

• Launch Nvidia Geforce Experience
• Click on the Settings icon on the top right corner
• Select the General Tab
• Turn of In-Game Overlay
• Restart your system

Advanced Method

Disable the Microsoft Software Protection Platform Service

[Note : This is an advanced method as it involves making changes to the Windows Registry. Do not try this unless you have proper knowledge.]

This something that a lot of Windows user probably wouldn’t know but there is a service called Microsoft Software Protection Platform Service or (sppsvc.exe). If you have a dual monitor setup and you pay close attention to the task manager (On the second screen of course) you will notice that a service called Microsoft Software Protection Platform Service keeps on popping up and starts eating a good percentage of CPU and Memory. This actually causes stuttering issues an FPS drops in heavy games.

How to disable SPPSVC

So just open your Windows Task Manager and try to observe whether a process called Microsoft Software Protection Platform Service is appearing on the list or not. If it is then you need to temporarily pause it in order to prevent COD MW 2 from stuttering. Simply clicking ‘End Task’ on the process will do nothing as the process will be back again in few seconds. So here is what you need to do:

1. Press Windows+R keys on your keyboard
2. Type regedit and press enter to bring up the Windows Registry Editor
3. Now go to this location : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sppsvc
4. On the right-side you will notice some options
5. Double-click on Start and change its value to from 2 to 4
6. Restart your PC

Keep in mind : This will disable Microsoft Software Protection Platform Service but your won’t able to use other Microsoft Windows applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, etc. Also, you will get a message showing your windows is not activated on your desktop. When you are done playing the game, just change the value of Start back to 2. Everything will go back to normal.

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These are the all the fixes that we have for the stuttering and freezing problems in Black Ops Cold War. We will be adding more soon.

If the problem you are facing is a serious one then the best option would be contacting the support. I would suggest that you take a look at the official Black Ops Cold War Reddit. You will find a lot of players discussing about these exact same issues.

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If you think this guide had helped you then let us know in the comment section below. Also, you can check out the other Call of Duty : Black Ops Cold War guides on Frondtech. Good luck!

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That’s all folks!

Last Updated on October 17, 2020