Unity Crashing, Access Violation

[Kielm]

I'm going to put this here for my own sanity, and in case anybody has a similar problem. 

UnityPlayer.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)

This problem has plagued me for months, probably close to a year. It seemed most prevalent in KSP, but I started to wonder when I encountered similar issues in other unity-based games. Sometimes the error would be in Unity itself, and sometimes in a dll that was in use at the time. The only common factor, it seems, was that Unity was at some point involved. 

Threads elsewhere for reference:

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/idlechampions/comments/9i0wwr/unityplayerdll_caused_an_access_violation/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/773951/discussions/0/1696040635916121951/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/unityplayer-dll-caused-an-access-violation.510062/
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/unity-crash-access-violation/35306
https://www.gog.com/forum/pathfinder_kingmaker/game_version_215x_unity_crashes_randomly_unityplayerdll_caused_an_access_violation_0xc000000
https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/jyl4b3/game_crashing_with_unityplayerdll_fault_exception/
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1260614-unityplayerdll-caused-an-access-violation-0xc0000005/

I ran through everything trying to hunt this down. BIOS flashing, windows updates, graphics drivers, everything. Eventually a thread on the Unity forums and a list of common factors seemed to point to one thing - almost everyone having this problem was using XMP overclocked RAM at 3200Mhz. I didn't initially see overclocked RAM as an issue; it's sold to be overclocked to 3200Mhz, and many motherboards provide built-in features to effortlessly overclock it. More importantly, every other game works absolutely fine, zero crashes or unusual issues. No other problems in Windows, everything all rosy. Just not Unity. 

It's such an infrequent issue (randomly popping up every 15mins to 4 hours) that I never bothered to look into it any further, and just kind of accepted it as an odd incompatibility somewhere. I finally bit the bullet earlier this week, and after extensive googling decided to manually enter the RAM timings in the BIOS, not expecting it to help. I have to say, I've been surprised. I can't say 100% that the problem's fixed due to the intermittent/random nature of the issue, but I've had about 10+ hours so far with no Unity crashes. 

 

For anyone having a similar issue, if you are using XMP in the BIOS to overclock your RAM to 3200Mhz, either manually enter the timings or choose another setting (e.g. 3000Mhz / 3400Mhz). You can use ryzen dram calculator (there's a good guide here) to do it yourself if you're feeling confident, but exercise extreme caution - incorrect settings can cause your hardware to fail. 

 

I don't know why Unity fails under such specific conditions, nor do I intend to find out, but I hope this proves useful to anyone who's been having the exact same issue.

Edited July 3, 2021 by Kielm

[Kielm]

OP is solution