Kept concealed somewhere in my cabinet, there’s an old hard drive that I could never throw away. It carries a Minecraft save file that shores up my first-ever survival world in the game.
I was young, and being a boy with no patience for creative tasks, the creation was quite an acknowledgment for me.
Now Minecraft is almost 13. The exploration sandbox developed initially by only one fine coder, Markus Persson, has now sold millions of copies across twenty-one different platforms. It’s fascinating to look back and realize how far things have come.
We all know Minecraft is a precision-crafted game that’s surprisingly stable for its genre. However, although infrequent, it’s totally acceptable for a tired developer to mistakenly slip their finger on their keyboard and cause the game to go ape.
But it isn’t always Mojang’s fault either. Oftentimes, many common issues, such as the infamous Error ‘Exit Code 0’, occur because of an underlying problem at your end.
Moreover, while there’s a slew of possible troubleshooting resources for the same, none talks about identifying the cause first.
How can you fix something if you don’t know what’s broken? That’s why I’m taking a different approach to help you fix this problem once for all. Here’s a solution that’s backed by insights, community support, and some common sense.
Also, Read: How to Fix OpenGL Error 1281 in Minecraft?
Access Crash Logs for God’s Sake
For those who don’t know, Mojang features an exclusive website location, made specifically for players to report bugs in Minecraft. Officially known as ‘Mojira’, the platform is community moderated and is accessible at bugs.mojang.com.
Whenever you encounter an issue with Minecraft, you’re supposed to report it to the developers and they’ll help you fix it.
Crash logs make it easier for the authorities to identify and diagnose the issue you’re facing, yet it’s very uncommon to see players attaching crash reports in their threads.
As a fundamental step to fix the Error ‘Exit Code 0’ in Minecraft, start your game and play it until the point it crashes. Once it does, follow the steps given below:
1. Gather The Log File
Foremost, you have to navigate to the location where your game directory exists, based on the type of launcher you used for the installation. Here are some common destinations for the game folder on various operating systems:
- Windows – %AppData%\.Minecraft\
- macOS – ~/Library/Application Support/Minecraft
- Linux – ~/.Minecraft
Once you’ve found the directory, access the crash-reports folder. In case there’s no crash report in the aforementioned directory, the issue is likely caused by a ‘JVM Failure’ for which the logs are accessible in the root of the game directory.
Alternatively, if the crash reports exist for your session, they should have a name structure similar to ‘crash-yyyy-mm-dd_hh.mm. ss-(client/server).txt’, which is evidently categorized by the time of the crash. This will also help you identify your required crash report.
2. Deobfuscate The Data
To save the hardworking developers some time and effort, you may consider deobfuscating the crash report file through obfuscation maps, which are nothing but mappings that can be used to remap the stack traces in crash reports and make them readable.
This can be done through a tool named ‘Retrace’, which is a utility of ProGuard used to parse obfuscation maps. It requires Java 8 or higher to run properly and can be downloaded from their official GitHub releases.
After downloading ProGuard, you have to decompress the archive in your specified location and access the ‘Bin’ directory in the extracted folder. You’ll find two executable scripts there, namely:
- Proguardui.bat – for Windows systems
- Proguardui.sh – for Unix-based Systems
Executing the script will launch a Java application with a ‘Retrace’ section on the left-hand side of the interface. Now, all that’s required to do is download the obfuscation map, paste your crash report, and run away with the deobfuscated file for sharing purposes.
Also, Read: Fix: Failed to verify Username Error in Minecraft
Before You Report a Bug, Read This!
Mojira is commonplace for gamers to report their issues with the game, which means a lot of gamers like you, who face issues with their gameplay, are going to report bugs.
To ensure that your report stays effective, you may follow certain guidelines such as:
- Use concise language and short phrases to explain your concern
- To help developers reproduce the issue, mention exactly what you did when the error occurred in numbered lists for readability
- Make sure you include the error code, such as Error Exit Code 0 for example, or any other messages you receive on your screen when the error occurred, in your report
- Attaching relevant files such as screenshots of the error, videos containing reproducible steps, and the saved file of your world will all make it useful to find the cause of the issue
- In case the attachments you’re trying to upload are way too large, upload them somewhere and share the link in your thread
- Formatting helps, but make sure you don’t overdo it
By following the aforementioned tips, trust me when I say your report will stand out way better than most of the threads on the platform.
This will ensure that developers respond to your concern quickly, and suggest you some relevant solutions.
In my opinion, this is a great example of a good bug report:
Here Comes the Troubleshooting Part
Depending on the information that your error report logs and other evidence convey, community members will suggest to you the relevant solutions, suggested just for your problem.
It’s not necessary that a mod’s suggestion would be better than a community member’s one and is just a matter of preference.
To help you get a better idea, here’s what a typical solution would look like:
As you may see above, the solution suggests the player update their Java version installed on their operating system.
It also contains helpful links to the files and guides required for the solution. Sometimes, they also may ask you for additional information, so make sure you collaborate well.
Now when you have a handful of solutions suggested for your query in hand, it’s time for the real action. Here are some common tasks you may be asked to do for resolving your issue:
- Eliminating Conflicting Processes
Minecraft is a program, the one that works through several processes to make things like voice chat, online play, and loading assets possible.
There are various software classes that may conflict with Minecraft’s runtime and cause issues, such as antiviruses, parental control software, proxies or VPN’s and more.
A handy list of conflicting software’s in Minecraft can be found in community resources.
- Ensuring You Have the Latest Java Version
If you’re playing the Java Edition or using any launcher to play Minecraft, it’s good to check whether your Java platform distribution is updated to the latest version. To download the latest version, you just have to visit the official page at java.com.
- Updating Graphics Drivers
Although Minecraft isn’t very demanding in terms of GPU power (unless you add some shader mods) and don’t even require a graphic card to play the standard game if you have some kind of integrated graphics in your PC, then it acting up will also cause your game to suffer.
So, make sure you update its drivers by navigating to Control Panel > Device Manager and choosing the relevant device from the list.
- Removing Mods for The Session
While mods are the backbone of Minecraft content creators, there are certain outdated or corrupted scripts that may cause issues with the game.
Depending on where you installed the mods from, you should disable all the mods at once and check which is the culprit of the issue by adding them one by one to the game again.
- Rebooting With Clean Boot
For the issues that are likely caused due to memory-related specs of your computer, you may get suggestions to perform a clean boot and reboot the computer with just what you require to play the game.
This can be done by navigating to System Configuration > Services and unchecking the ones that belong to hardware on your PC.
The Takeaway
Minecraft’s community support is truly praiseworthy, but people just can’t make sense out of it. We hope that this guide makes your troubleshooting processes a lot less aimless and helps you gain a working solution as quickly as possible.
Also, Read: Minecraft is talking and I’m not ok with it
