My computer crashes games all of a sudden after updating it.

Question

After playing all my favorite games I noticed that I had some updates, so I updated Windows and my NVIDIA Driver. After the updates, I couldn't play 85% of my games for longer than 2 minutes without a crash. Some games crash hard enough to crash the whole computer and put it into a restart loop. I've tried restarting it, re-downloading everything I updated, and ran diagnostics but got nothing. The games worked the night before so I assume the problems have something to do with what I updated but I can't prove it, and the fact that it happens on multiple games leads me to believe its not a problem with one particular game.

I tried running an in-place upgrade but it runs into problems every time it hits 56% and stops.

These are my error logs.

https://1drv.ms/u/c/581c86958d6a27f5/IQDL0fm22ijyQpyDQI5HEsKfAYzyqmJn7ZY_sChlGyfOrtk?e=cp3JYq

Answer 1

See if your computer is creating minidump files.

To find these files, this is the path "C:\Windows\Minidump".

First copy and paste all the minidump files you have to another folder and then zip it. Then upload the ZIP file to the cloud OneDrive.

Choose to share or right click and get the share link.

Please post the link to the ZIP file here so it can be reviewed.

Answer 2

Follow these steps to troubleshoot repeated crashes and restart loops after Windows and NVIDIA driver updates:

1. Remove any recently added hardware
   • If any new hardware (RAM, SSD, USB devices, controllers, etc.) was added around the same time, power off the PC, disconnect/remove it, and test the games again.
2. Boot into Safe Mode for stability
   • Because the system can enter a restart loop, boot into Safe Mode first. See the steps in Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10 from the referenced article (the process is similar in Windows 11). From Safe Mode you can:
     • Uninstall/reinstall the NVIDIA driver
     • Roll back problematic drivers
     • Run additional checks without heavy GPU load.
3. Check Device Manager for driver issues
   • Right‑click Start > Device Manager.
   • Look for any devices with a yellow exclamation mark (!), especially under Display adapters, System devices, and Sound, video and game controllers.
   • For any flagged device:
     • Right‑click > Update driver.
     • If that does not help, right‑click > Uninstall device, then restart to let Windows reinstall a clean driver.
4. Ensure sufficient free disk space
   • Confirm that the system drive (usually C:) has at least 10–15% free space.
   • Low free space can cause instability and failed in‑place upgrades.
5. Install all current Windows Updates
   • Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security (or Windows Update in Windows 11) > Windows Update.
   • Select Check for Windows updates and install everything offered (including optional quality/driver updates), then restart and test games again.
6. If crashes persist, use Windows recovery options
   • Since an in‑place upgrade fails at 56%, use the built‑in recovery options instead of repeatedly retrying the same upgrade:
     • Use System Restore to roll back to a restore point from before the updates (if available).
     • If that is not available or does not help, use one of the other options under Recovery options in Windows (for example, “Reset this PC” while keeping personal files).
   • Choose the least destructive option that matches the situation (start with System Restore, then move to reset/repair options if needed).
7. If still unstable after recovery
   • If, after using recovery options, games still crash and Windows continues to show blue screens or restart loops with the same stop code, follow the Advanced troubleshooting steps for Windows blue screens and stop code errors referenced in the article. That path is intended for advanced users/IT pros and focuses on analyzing bug checks and hardware/driver interactions.

These steps directly address repeated blue screens and restart loops after updates, and provide a path to either stabilize the current installation or roll it back without immediately resorting to a full clean install.

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References:

• Troubleshooting Windows unexpected restarts and stop code errors