A frustrating Modern Warfare 3 DirectX Fail error is impacting many players on PC. The game either runs for a short while or doesn’t even launch at all with a prompt that says that DirectX has failed for MW3. Along with a bunch of error code numbers and letters, it says that game_steam_ship.exe or game-ship.exe are what is experiencing problems. There are a lot of reasons why this is happening, and unfortunately a lot of the typical fixes like verifying game files and restarting the PC doesn’t usually work. Here are some solutions you can try to fix the DirectX errors for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (and Call of Duty HQ) on PC via Steam.
How to fix Modern Warfare 3 DirectX Fail error
Below are some methods to fix any stubborn DirectX Fail or “DirectX encountered an unrecoverable error” message for Modern Warfare 3:
- Update DirectX Drivers – Check to make sure your DirectX 12 drivers are up to date.
- Revert to prior DirectX Drivers – If there are issues with the current DX12 driver, you may want to revert back to a working version of it instead.
- Download Intel Extreme Tuning Utility – If you have an Intel processor, we recommend downloading this program and tuning your CPU to a different speed. Essentially, you will want to underlock your CPU from 55x to another setting like 54 or 52.
- Turn off XMP – Intel’s XMP or Extreme Memory Profiles could be the reason behind the DirectX issues. You will need to head to your system’s BIOS (usually by entering the boot menu upon your PC’s startup) and disable XMP in the settings there.
The last two solutions are somewhat technical, but many users in a Modern Warfare Reddit thread about the issue in the past have found that it’s either the CPU or RAM that is the root cause for DirectX Fail errors.
For more Modern Warfare 3 guides, here’s how to solve various PC performance issues and any application unexpectedly stopped working bugs.
