Game and event load times

Constantly over 15 minutes to be added to the game or an event for it then to instantly close down.

Nobody should have to pay for ■■■■ like this. I work for a gaming company and this would be reason for instant priority 1 fixes.

Your experience isn’t normal!

I can generally boot my computer, load Zwift and be in an event inside 2 minutes.

Tell us about your setup and other people will be able to support you and hopefully make things better.

Also, tone it down a little bit :wink:

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Thanks for replying

2 laptop setups both Win10
Both laptops have SSD 8gb ram and i7 processor

I have changed the setting of zwift from 1080 to 720 and to 420 on each laptop

Today companion app was waiting for me for over 15 minutes while the game loaded on the laptop. All my devices had connected and I was trying to join my event that started at 07:00. I was in Zwift at 06:30 and attempted to join the event at 06:50 at 07:09 zwift ended on my laptop and shut itself down.

I restarted my laptop and attempted to re-open Zwift to just go and cycle in a world after another 20 minutes of nothing but the blue swift screen I took my bike off the smart trainer and went outside. I came back 40 minutes later and zwift was still on its blue screen. As I put my bike away I went into the login page and it detected my heart rate monitor and my smart trainer.

This happens on both laptops.
I’ve removed zwift from my smartphone because I found that if the login to the laptop failed at anytime and I logged into the game on my smartphone it never actually recorded my ride.
Zwift support previously advised me it happens because the game on the laptop still thinks I’m logged in.

I am 2m away from a 1gb fibre internet connection.

2nd time since Friday this has happened.

But this year this is a pretty normal experience I have to login to zwift normally 1 hour before an event to eventually get the game to join me to the event.

It’s definitely not. More than a couple minutes to load the game on a system that approaches reasonable I’d be worried.

It is unlikely to be the cause but I would start by reinstalling the game and seeing if it makes any difference to how long it takes you to join an event.

I probably re-install monthly to try and improve the experience. This is also why I have downgraded the quality of the game play to try and speed the login up.

On my phone the load time is fast but not always does the ‘join event’ button come up, unless i cancel the event and rejoin it, but I don’t want to have to use my phone when I have a laptop which is almost only used for Zwift.

Perfectly reasonable!

even before I switched to an SSD my pretty ancient PC would probably take a max of 5 minutes from loading the game to riding. Down below a couple of minutes since upgrading to an SSD.

How old are your laptops? is anything else running on them? If you only use them for zwift you could try a fresh instal of windows and then zwift to clean them up.

Both laptops have just dropped out of their 3 year warranty.

One is used mainly for my photography studio stuff but as a backup I use it for zwift. Whether i use Adobe photoshop or lightroom the disk iops and processor barely run high, zwift they can both go through the roof.

The laptop that is my go to zwift laptop and connected to the tv is a fresh reinstall maybe November 2021. It’s used for the internet and zwift. Last zwift install was within past 30 days.

My companion app this morning showing 15mins of me waiting, 0 distance travelled and then a few minutes later the zwift game terminated on my laptop.

No PC should be taking more than 20secs from power button to the Windows desktop. If it does, something is amiss (including not using an SSD - there’s no excuse, they’ve been affordable for a decade).

From there, the launcher takes a few seconds and the game reliably takes 25-40secs from ‘Let’s Go’ to the pairing screen. After selecting a world/route/event, loading into the game proper takes 10-20secs. This has been the case on basically every setup I’ve used and built, it simply doesn’t get a great deal faster between 2012 and 2022 parts.

If your times are substantially more than this in any regard, you need to do some investigating because the problem is at your end. If you only use the system for Zwift, clean installing Windows 10 is a great idea. Should take less than an hour all in, including all updates and installing Zwift (depending on broadband speed). Reinstalling the game regularly isn’t necessary.

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I assume you are quite capable and familiar with PC tech then, unless you are the night janitor or something. Do any of your colleagues use Zwift too? Maybe they can help you troubleshoot this issue?

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Good morning @Graham_Gibbs_2979

What will help us to get a better idea of your system can you upload some of your log files of some longer successful rides to https://zwiftalizer.com/ and share the link. that will help us a lot.

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The bit about this that is confusing me is that the companion app thinks they have started their ride before it has loaded.

Is that what normally happens?

Tech wise competent enough, OS reinstalls are not an issue and as i said last one was done in Nov 21. My laptops dont take long to load thats not the problem the problem is the time zwift takes to load from the ‘lets go’ to searching for my smart trainer and HRM.
Once devices are connected if i join a ‘just ride’ i can say this can take up to 5 minutes but normally less.
If i join an event i know several things can happen
Takes ages to join often miss the start, despite logging in 30 minutes or more before, and zwift can often close when i do join
If i join the event from companion app the zwift game will often not recognise this, i then have to cancel the event from companion and re-add via the laptop or cancel via companion, re-add, cancel, re-add until the game recognises i have an event to join

Will find logs of longer rides and upload over the weekend.

Whenever i have long ‘join’ time i can almost always guarantee that Zwift will load the event, will often say ‘joing riders’ or whatever message that is about catching you up to the pack and then Zwift closes down

Thanks for all tips, im getting a friend around at the weekend with his laptop who uses zwift and we will test from his and then go to his and test again from mine

Does your home network have anything extra, like a mesh network, VPN, or anything that could be causing a delay with talking to Zwift’s servers?

It seems to be the default behaviour now on my PC, since a few updates ago IIRC. As soon as my trainer is paired to Zwift, Companion on my phone shows the map screen, though not showing a map until I select and launch a route/ride. Don’t recall if this coincided with the new UI or not.

yeah i get that too but i didn’t think the timer started going until you started riding, how does it know what world you are going to be on? and when you end a ride it goes back to the map view too.

True, Chris. The timer only starts on mine when I arrive in a world, or a group ride or race begins. When a ride ends, my Companion returns to whichever tab/section was visible before the ride.
In the OP’s case it almost sounds like there is more than one device with a Zwift session actively running on it in the OP’s vicinity, but the situation described doesn’t quite fit.

That’s because you’re in the ‘home world’ thing, behind the menu. The first one isn’t selectable, so the Companion chucks you elsewhere.

When you say zwift closes down does it actually crash?, is there anything in event logs of the crash?

As for the joining events if you can replicate the issue often I would start my ruling out things.

e.g
Skip pairing just leave trainer switched off.
ignore companion app just use zwift on pc.
If possible use another wifi network - maybe test too often.

As everyone else suggests the times you are experiencing are way above the norm for a modern pc.

If you haven’t run a log file through ZA I highly recommend it!!