Game freezing multiple times a match

Bug Reports
1

I’m pretty new to Deadlock, started playing about a week ago and had 0 issues with freezing or any other performance problems. That is, until a couple days ago. Now, every single match without fail, at seemingly random intervals (though very often when I’m near enemies, whether it’s a coincidence or not) my game will just completely freeze on a single frame for anywhere from a few seconds to over 10 seconds. Occasionally, it will briefly unfreeze for a few frames only to instantly do it again, though it’s usually just once. On rare occasion, it has completely frozen and I’ve had to entirely close and restart the game.
I’m genuinely at the point where I just can’t play Deadlock anymore until I figure out how to fix this because without fail this will happen multiple times a game, usually resulting in me feeding an enemy a free kill and getting flamed by my team because I literally could not see what was happening as I was stuck on a single frame for ~10 seconds randomly. I don’t have an absolute powerhouse pc by any means as I got it about 3 years ago and need to upgrade but life is expensive and my car needs fixed, but I’ve yet to play a game that I straight up couldn’t run, and Deadlock happens to run completely smooth at my 120fps cap with no stuttering or issues ASIDE from the random freezing.

specs (not great but the game should still be playable I’d think?):
alienware m15 r7 laptop (yeah yeah I know)
3060 6gb
16gb ram
i7-12700H 2.30ghz

Things I’ve tried:
-reinstalling
-validating files
-updating drivers
-disabling bluetooth (I use bluetooth headphones and someone suggested it could cause it, idk)
-playing on fullscreen at a lower hz than my monitor (another random forum suggestion I read)
-restarting pc
-restarting game when it starts happening (nothing works, I’ve yet to get through a single game without freezing)
-setting cpu usage to 0 in the cfg files (another suggestion I read online)
-installing ISLC
-freeing up a ton of space on my pc (I had a similar issue with COD a while back until I realized I had like 5gb of storage space free and it was causing the issue somehow, stopped happening when I cleared stuff up. No luck with Deadlock.)
-changing EVERY SINGLE graphic setting. dx11, vulkan, low, high, reflex on/off, seriously I’ve tried everything
-limiting my max cpu usage to 99%, 98%, 95%, 90% etc in power plan
-closing every background application including discord and chrome which people have suggested could cause it

I should also specify that this does not happen with ANY other games that I know of. It seems to specifically only happen in Deadlock.

2

Okay, weird development: I made a full post about this on the sub, but to summarize, I realized that the only thing that changed before I started freezing in game was that I got some new airpods and was using those while playing the game instead of my laptop speakers, so for the hell of it I tried disabling bluetooth entirely and it seems to have actually fixed the issue, at least thus far (multiple full bot matches and a full pvp match)?

Maybe this is obvious to smarter people but to me it’s really strange that this was possibly the issue. On one hand I’m glad I seem to have found a solution, on the other I’m bummed I can’t use my headphones, especially since I work nights and have roommates, meaning on my days off (where I’m mostly playing) it’s the dead of night when I’m awake and playing and can’t blast the game super loud. Oh well, I guess?

Coming off of that, does anyone have any possible fix for bluetooth freezing the game up or are bluetooth earbuds just not an option for me?

3

Thanks mate, somehow turning off bluetooth also solved my game stuttering and freezing problem. I used a bluetooth keyboard.