Call of Duty Vanguard: How to Fix the Most Common Bugs and Glitches

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Call of Duty: Vanguard is here, and, in the grand tradition of most modern Call of Duty games at launch, it’s full of bugs and glitches that are haunting early adopters who couldn’t wait to grab the series’ latest installment.

The annual arrival of a series of major technical problems isn’t exactly the Call of Duty franchise’s proudest tradition, but unless you’re waiting to buy Vanguard, the sad fact of the matter is that you’re going to have to deal with quite a few problems that could severely impact your ability to enjoy, or even play, the game.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some of the most common Call of Duty: Vanguard bugs and glitches and what, if anything, you can do about them.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Frequent PC Crashes

PC players who are trying to launch Call of Duty: Vanguard through Battle.net are reporting that the game tends to crash to the desktop at rather unfortunate times. The only somewhat helpful message they receive whenever this happens is “Trying a ‘Scan and Repair’ might solve the issue.”

Well, trying to scan and repair the install file may resolve this issue, but strangely enough, I’ve seen more than a few players say that “Scan and Repair” doesn’t actually seem to do anything. Nevertheless, give it a shot by clicking the “cog” icon next to the “Play” button under Vanguard and select the “Scan and Repair” option. Maybe you’ll get lucky.

However, it seems like you might have more luck fixing this issue if you simply restart your computer, reinstall the Battle.net launcher, or update your GPU driver. I’ve also heard some theorize that this could be caused by running additional apps in the background while playing Vanguard, so try shutting down pretty everything but Vanguard if you’re desperate for a fix.

Call of Duty: Vanguard Keeps Freezing on PS4

If you’re one of the many PS4 gamers just waiting to get their hands on a PS5, you may be disheartened to learn that Vanguard seems to have quite a few compatibility issues with Sony’s best-selling console. Most notably, numerous players are reporting that the PS4 version of the game keeps freezing randomly.

While you can try resetting your PS4 (or even reinstalling the game) to try to address this issue, it seems that some players have had more luck going into the game’s options menu and disabling “On-demand Texture Streaming” (which you can find under the “Graphics” tab).

It’s not entirely clear if this is exactly what’s causing this issue, but since it does seem that some of the PS4’s issues are related to optimization problems, it’s certainly worth giving this a shot.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Many Audio Issues

Generally speaking, Call of Duty: Vanguard has a lot of audio problems. While the most common audio issue with the game seems to be related to its “muffled” audio cues that make it very difficult to hear certain actions, it just seems like there’s generally something wrong with many of the game’s audio files.

As it turns out, it seems like that’s exactly what’s happening. In fact, it appears that this is one of those issues that will ultimately need to be fixed by the Vanguard team via an update. Until then, you’re left experimenting with the best available quick fixes in order to try to make things a little better.

So far as that goes, you can try updating your graphics driver (if you’re on PC) or playing with the audio settings in order to try to find that sweet spot on your own. Again, though, you really shouldn’t expect any miracles in this department until some of the updates start to hit.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s “Dev Error 5573” Crash

One of Vanguard‘s most common and frustrating issues has to be the mysterious “Dev Error 5573” crash that is currently affecting an alarming number of PC players.

As it turns out, it seems that this error is caused by trying to equip a non-default outfit for one of your operators. Some players are reporting that they’re able to perform this seemingly simple function without issue, but it really does seem like changing outfits is currently causing one of the year’s biggest games to crash.

As sad as it is to say this, it really does seem like the best thing you can do to stop this issue (if you keep encountering it) is to simply stick to default character skins.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Reticles Are Not Unlocking Properly

Like most Call of Duty games, Vanguard allows you to unlock new reticles and other items by achieving certain multiplayer milestones. The trouble is that quite a few players are reporting that it seems like they’re unable to unlock many of the game’s reticles even if they complete the necessary challenges multiple times.

To be honest, it’s not entirely clear what’s happening here. So far as anyone can tell, though, this is just a straight-up bug that seems to be affecting many players for no clear reason. Even worse, it doesn’t seem like there’s a global “fix” to this issue if you do happen to encounter it.

That being the case, you’re sadly going to have to wait for the Vanguard team to release an update that truly fixes this problem.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Combat Shield Glitch Causes It To Stop Working

While CoD players tend to debate about the usefulness of the game’s Combat Shield (also known as the Riot Shield), but everyone agrees that the item’s usefulness is incredibly dependent on it actually working properly.

Unfortunately, Vanguard‘s Combat Shield simply doesn’t seem to be working at the moment. While some players are reporting that the shield just doesn’t seem to be stopping every bullet as it should, others are saying that the shield just isn’t stopping any bullets in certain circumstances.

Since this also seems to be one of those problems the developers will eventually need to fix, the best thing you can do at the moment is simply not equip the Combat Shield until things improve.

Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Xbox Graphics Bug Makes the Game Nearly Unplayable

While Call of Duty: Vanguard‘s “previous-gen” ports absolutely have problems, Xbox Series X players are strangely reporting that they seem to be experiencing some bizarre graphics bugs that cause truly odd things to appear on-screen. The problem seems to affect everyone a little differently, but here’s one example of what it looks like:

While some players have had a little luck fixing this issue by reinstalling their game or turning off every advanced graphics option that they can find, the sporadic and odd nature of this issue means that it’s a little hard to pin down at the moment.

That being the case, it sadly sounds like this is another one of those problems that won’t be properly fixed until the Vanguard team starts releasing more patches and updates.