With Batman: Arkham Asylum just released, some users have already started to complain on the official forums that the game is crashing and freezing after a few minutes of play. Even though at the moment the forums are not flooded with such complains which might meant that the problems are not widespread, it’s worth knowing how to fix such crashes in case they occur.

Apparently, there are two different types of crashes experienced until now: one in which after a few minutes of gameplay the screen goes black, the computer locks up and the audio starts to stutter; and another one in which the “beloved” blue screen appears on the monitor and nothing can be done.

Well… there might be something you can do to fix the Batman: Arkham Asylum crashes, freezes and lock-ups. From the discussions on the official Batman boards as well as experience from past similar experiences, it appears that some Realtek Audio Cards are causing the problems.

In such cases, all you have to do is to disable the Realtek sound card from your device manager (extreme caution is needed and unless you know what you’re doing, it might be wiser not to do it) or simply try and mute the sound completely. Reports from players who had problems with Batman freezing and crashing are great: all of them turned off their sound cards and the game worked fine!

There is another possible trick to do in order to reduce the intensity, but for now there are no reports whether it works or not (a trick to fix Batman: Arkham Asylum crashes suggested by forum user The Coca Cola Company):

Open file BMEngine.ini in C:\Users\***username***\Documents\Eidos\Batman Arkham Asylum\BmGame\Config with a text editor and change the following lines:

[FMODAudio.FMODAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=200
UseEffectsProcessing=True
EnableMIDIMixing=False

to:

[FMODAudio.FMODAudioDevice]
MaxChannels=32
UseEffectsProcessing=False
EnableMIDIMixing=False

If it doesn’t work and the game still crashes, try turning the sounds off completely and wait for Eidos to find a fix to this problem. If the method above worked for you and Batman: Arkham Asylum doesn’t crash anymore, please let the world know in the comment section below!