Windows 11 update KB5121003 is crashing popular games

Technology Windows 11 update KB5121003 is crashing popular games Microsoft confirms KB5121003 causes crashes in Arc Raiders, The Finals and Tokon: Fighting Souls.

Key points

• The KB5121003 update, published August 11 for builds 26200.9168 and 26100.9168, introduces a bug that triggers EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION errors and, in some cases, restarts the PC entirely mid-session.
• Stringfellow documented the problem on a Snapdragon-powered Surface Laptop 7th Edition, and other users have confirmed matching challenges on the HP OmniBook 3 and Surface Pro 11.
• According to Embark, there was something regarding the KB5121003 patch which ceased it from working properly with the driver, causing game crashes.
• According to Microsoft has, its August Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 is causing games to crash on some PCs.
• A similar bug appeared earlier this year with KB5094126 and was resolved by rolling back that update before resurfacing with this release.

For context, the KB5121003 update, published August 11 for builds 26200.9168 and 26100.9168, introduces a bug that triggers EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION errors and, in some cases, restarts the PC entirely mid-session.

Arc Raiders, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals have been identified as games responsible for sending crash reports to Microsoft; nevertheless, Microsoft emphasises that the list is not exhaustive.

For context, the developer of Arc Raiders and The Finals, Embark Studios, believes the source of the matter to be inpoutx64.sys, an external kernel-mode driver often loaded by peripheral device utilities, including Razer's own.

Meanwhile, a separate Reddit user performed an analysis of his kernel dump file and identified a "bad-handle bug". It results from the fact that the updated kernel now validates its handles more strictly.

Notably, the update is additionally breaking Microsoft's own software on Arm devices. Though the classic Outlook app still works, according to a Microsoft Learn post from Brian Stringfellow, Teams crashes shortly after opening and the new Outlook fails to launch entirely on Arm64 systems after installing KB5121003.

For context, a similar bug appeared earlier this year with KB5094126 and was resolved by rolling back that update before resurfacing with this release.

Microsoft has not suggested any solution to these challenges, but it has acknowledged that the crash in games challenge affects Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 and is at present investigating if the update itself or some other program is causing this problem.

Embark, by contrast, has published their own temporary solution which involves removing the incompatible inpoutx64.sys file. Some of the affected individuals state that reverting to KB5121003 using DISM will stop all the crashes completely.

Some individuals have turned off Windows Update for up to a month to avoid having the patch installed again. Reverting to KB5121003 removes over 400 security patches along with the update.

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In short, windows 11 update KB5121003 is crashing popular games is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.