How to fix the "Access Violation" crash for Payday 2?

Solution 1:

A posting on the Steam Forums by a developer for Payday 2 states the following:

There are a few programs that have been reported as causing issues when installed alongside PAYDAY 2, if you are using any of them and you are experiencing performance issues or crashes you might want to consider any alternatives. We would like to point out that we have not confirmed these issues but we have seen reports about these or issues that no longer appeared once the program was no longer running.

  • Raptr
  • DisplayLink
  • Hamachi
  • Qualcomm Killer Network Manager
  • ASUS Gamer OSD
  • ASUS Smart Doctor
  • Evolve client
  • Avira Antivirus (Add Payday 2 and it's installation folder to the exceptions)
  • Overwolf
  • Razer's Synapse Statistics
  • Avast Home Network Protection (Add Payday 2 and it's installation folder to the exceptions)
  • EVGA PrecisionX (this program can auto start even if you think it's disabled)
  • RivaTuner
  • Kaspersky Antivirus (has been reported in cause FPS drops)
  • GeForce Experience (has been reported in some cases to increase loading times)

What interested me the most was the EVGA PrecisionX bullet. I do not have the PrecisionX software, but I do have MSI Afterburner, which is a similar program that I use and let run in the background most of the time.

So, I exited my MSI Afterburner software (thus killing all of its processes), and so far, I've been able to play the game for a much longer time now without any crashes (probably about 5 hours total without any crashing yet). With MSI Afterburner running, I could rarely make it past 30 minutes without a crash occuring. So it seems that MSI Afterburner was the cause of the crashes in my case.