I've been getting crash on start up issues with Darkest since I downloaded it this past Feb (2017). The 2 issues are a TDR timeout and something claiming to be a "kernel exception". I've searched and found threads covering the TDR issue but I can't find anything on the kernel exception either through a google search, nor on the NVIDIA site, through the link the error message provides. The issue(s) usually happen immediately upon startup of the game. After 10-30s, I can sometimes get to the home screen, or perhaps the village view, and then I may have 1-2 more crashes.

I have found that these incidents tend to happen shortly after I boot my laptop. I believe I'm giving the comp time to get booted and all the background apps/services loaded and stable. But perhaps I'm not giving enough time?

I've made sure my GPU drivers are up to date. I've looked into the graphics registry files to see that the delay setting for the TDR was reasonably long (it was set to 5s, apparently by default). Today I downloaded the latest build of Darkest (build 17687) that has all the patches incorporated. I played this afternoon with no incident. Booted up this evening only to be met by both issues in succession: first attempt crashed for a TDR time out, second attempt at starting the game crashed with the kernel exception.

I have an ASUS ROG G551JW running Windows 10. My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks