I’ve seen other reports with no answer given. This happens to both my wife and I on separate computers. My wife has started Power to the Tower 4 times now and it keeps crashing before she can finish.
We both have new Microsoft PCs. Both beefy machines. Both patched and up to date. It seems Zwift support does not take this seriously. To me, this is obviously a software problem with Zwift.
The fact that these issues remain speaks to Zwift customer concern or lack there of.
Please share the specs for these devices. Which CPU and GPU is installed? Or let me know the model ID for the laptop (usually on a sticker on the bottom).
The answer depends on the details of what you have. In some cases there are solutions you can try, in other cases you may be made aware of a bug.
My PC:
Snapdragon® X Elite (12 Core), with OLED display
Sapphire
Wi-Fi
16GB RAM
512GB SSD
Surface Pro 11
Windows 11
Zwift does not support running the game on a Windows system with an ARM64 CPU. There is no native game release for your system architecture, which means Windows runs it in emulation. I have never heard anyone say that they got acceptable game performance and stability on a system like that, and the official word from Zwift is you need an Intel compatible CPU:
Some previous discussion about that:
My problem with this explanation is I’ve completed Power to the Tower on this same machine. Zwift randomly crashes. Not every time.
My wife has a similarly new Microsoft Surface laptop with an Intel CPU and Zwift crashes for her more than me.
Good luck with the ARM system but unfortunately you are on your own for that.
The Intel based machine probably has a decent chance of being usable. Things I would try first:
• Assuming it uses Intel integrated graphics, download the latest driver directly from the Intel website: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/785597/intel-arc-iris-xe-graphics-windows.html
• Turn off the Video Screenshots setting in Zwift
• Turn off OneDrive or disable syncing of the Documents folder
• Disable any anti-virus software other than Microsoft Defender
FYI, I should add the we have the Zwift Ride
Thanks for the advice. Well try the above with my wife’s computer.
And, since I know something about software and graphics and Microsoft, I’m going to run some diagnostics myself to see what’s going on.
I was also wondering if you are on Windows 11 24H2 which introduced changes to the emulation layer:
I have been curious if that makes it more usable. In any case I imagine Prism will continue to be actively developed so things might just get better as that happens. Microsoft clearly has a goal of making Intel games run better on ARM.