If Hogwarts Legacy is stuck at “Preparing Shaders” on your PC, don’t worry, there are plenty of fixes for that. Keep reading.
Hogwarts Legacy Preparing Shaders Stuck – How to fix
Hogwarts Legacy is finally here on all major platforms. Apart from a few bugs, errors here and there, and some minor performance issues, the game seems to be running fine for most people. Obviously, the game runs flawlessly on PS5. It is the PC users who are experiencing minor hiccups. It seems like Hogwarts Legacy is getting stuck at the “Preparing Shaders” portion for a lot of PC users. From what I have seen so far, it is mainly prevalent among Low to Medium-End GPU users and Gaming Laptop users. I personally tried the game on an RTX 3060 Ti and an RTX 3070. But didn’t experience any issues. It was when I popped in my RTX 2060, I got the Preparing Shaders bug for the first time. I did manage to fix it, so here is what you can do.
[Note: This does not fix the issue where “Preparing Shaders” is popping up every time you start the game. We are still looking for a fix for that]
Just Restart Hogwarts Legacy and Steam
If you have just installed Hogwarts, then I would suggest that you simply quit the game, close Steam, and restart your PC. Yes, I know this fix sounds silly, but if you just visit the Steam Discussions page of Hogwarts Legacy, you will notice how effective this fix has proven to be for a lot of people. If you got stuck at Building Shaders the first time, it would go through this time.
Be Patient
If the fix given above doesn’t end up working for you, then all you need to do is wait. The truth is, “Preparing Shaders” is just Shader Caching, and it is quite similar to “Compiling Shaders” from COD. The process can take a while, as it happens only once. If you have a fast NVMe M.2 SSD, then the process is going to be faster for you.
It is actually a great way to prevent performance issues once you start playing the game. Shaders are created on the CPU (yes, 100% load), so everything depends on its power. It should take 5–10 minutes during the first run.
Also, DO NOT ALT+TAB OUT OF THE GAME WHEN THE GAME IS BUILDING SHADERS!
Upgrade or Downgrade your GPU Driver
You see, every time you make changes to your GPU Driver, the game will force start Preparing Shaders again. So every time you upgrade or downgrade your GPU driver, the Preparing Shaders portion will start from scratch. This is actually a very effective fix that has worked for thousands of players who were experiencing the compiling shaders bug in COD MW2. So you can try that.
There you go; these are the only working fixes for the “Preparing Shaders” bug in Hogwarts Legacy. I am seeing a lot of websites recommending people to make BIOS changes to fix the issue. Please do not so that! This has nothing to do with BIOS. You might end up breaking your system.
I would suggest that you take a look at the official Steam Discussions Page of Hogwarts Legacy. You will find a lot of players discussing these exact same issues.
If you think this guide has helped you, then let us know in the comment section below. Also, if you are facing other game problems, try checking out our other guides on Hogwarts Legacy. Who knows, you might end up finding a fix.
That’s all, folks!
Last Updated on February 9, 2023
Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.