Getting out of loading screen lock
I know this plagues all queues, but it is especially bad in the 18-man 3v3's. Nearly every, if not every loading screen it seems is plagued by someone locking up and causing a 5 minute load time. I've seen it happen regardless of how good systems are, it's happened to me, it's happened to all of my friends, I don't honestly know anyone it hasn't affected.
The problem is not so much that it locks your computer up, it doesn't. It's that League completely hogs the visual output when it breaks this way. Your computer still works during this time, however Task Manager is pretty ineffective at clearing it out.
Well, I am glad to announce, that I have found the quickest way out and I'd like to share it with everyone here so that maybe we can cut down on times going forward depending on how many see this.
The first thing you're going to do is run an instance of Windows PowerShell and make sure you keep it open while you're playing.
Before you start LoL up, type exactly this command in:
> Stop-Process -Name "League of Legends"
And hit enter. An error message should pop up saying
> Stop-Process : Cannot find a process with the name "League of Legends". Verify the process name and call the cmdlet again. > At line:1 char:1 > + Stop-Process -Name "League of Legends" > + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (League of Legends:String) [Stop-Process], ProcessCommandException > + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NoProcessFoundForGivenName,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.StopProcessCommand
That's fine, the error is just telling you it's not running. But now you have your way out of the screen. Really all we're trying to do here is get it as your most recent PowerShell command.
Now when you encounter the freeze, you can alt + tab out to PowerShell (even if you can't see it) and hit the up arrow key and then Enter. It will immediately kill your LoL process and allow you to reconnect.
Happy slaughtering on The Rings of Wrath.