As if the steep system requirements weren’t enough for Alan Wake 2, players could suffer from startup crashes as well. I suffered from the same issue when I first tried to boot up the game; however, there is a fix for that, and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it quickly.
How to fix Alan Wake 2 Startup Crash
Upon launching the game for the first time, After a couple of starting screens, I was greeted with Menu_Authentication_Failed_Epic error.
I tried different things, like making sure my GPU drivers were up to date, verifying the game files, and restarting the PC, but nothing seemed to work. However, when I contacted support, they told me that to fix the startup crash issue in Alan Wake 2, I needed to make sure that I didn’t have apps like MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner Statistics in the background.
At first, I was skeptical about it as these utilities in the background never caused an issue for me; however, when I disabled them both, my issue was fixed, and my game booted up normally.
While my issue was fixed, I wondered if Alan Wake 2 would crash again if I turned on MSI Afterburner and Rivatuner. Surprisingly for me, the game hasn’t crashed for me with both the utilities.
So, if you are facing a similar error message on startup and your game is crashing, try disabling any background applications on your PC.
It goes without saying that GPU drivers should be up to date as Remedy Entertainment has repeatedly encouraged players to update the drivers to the latest available version for the optimized experience.
