Microsoft has acknowledged that the latest Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 may be causing crashes in some games, following user reports of errors and unexpected reboots.
The KB5121003 update was released on August 11 for Windows 11 builds 26200.9168 and 26100.9168. It delivered multiple new features, improvements, and bug fixes, but some users who installed it say it also introduced a serious stability problem.
According to a Reddit thread started last week by user MyCatsNameIsKlaus, several people reported game crashes, error messages, and automatic reboots after installing the update. Redditor Thin_Twist7030 posted event logs, Windows Error Reporting files, and a kernel dump analysis produced by DeepSeek, arguing that the game crashes were actually system blue screens of death occurring while playing Arc Raiders.
The affected games can crash and display the EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error. In some cases, the PC automatically reboots after the crash.
The AI analysis suggests the update tightened kernel handle validation, causing a pre-existing “bad-handle bug” that Windows previously ignored or returned an error for to instead trigger bug check 0x93 INVALID_KERNEL_HANDLE.
Microsoft has confirmed that the issue affects Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2 and is investigating whether the cause is the update itself or incompatible third-party software. The company listed affected games as Arc Raiders, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals.
Microsoft has not yet suggested an official workaround. Thin_Twist7030 reported that rolling back KB5121003 using DISM stopped the crashes on their system. They also paused Windows Update for one month to prevent the package from reinstalling automatically. As a longer-term fix, they recommended removing old drivers responsible for the bad-handle bug.
Game crashes and random reboots are not the only issues being linked to KB5121003. In a post on Microsoft Learn, Brian Stringfellow wrote that Teams and the new Outlook are no longer working on ARM devices after installing the update. Teams crashes after opening, while the new Outlook does not launch at all. The classic Outlook app continues to work as expected.
Stringfellow said the issue is affecting a Snapdragon-powered Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition assigned to his company’s CFO. He added that the same problem appeared earlier this year after installing KB5094126 and was resolved by rolling back that update, only to reemerge after last week’s release.
Microsoft has not yet publicly responded to the ARM device report, but other users replied to the thread confirming similar issues on an HP OmniBook 3 and a Surface Pro 11, both powered by ARM64 processors.
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