Microsoft Confirms Windows 11 KB5121003 Update Is Crashing Games and Rebooting PCs

Microsoft has acknowledged that its latest Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 is causing games to crash on some systems. The KB5121003 update, released on August 11 for builds 26200.9168 and 26100.9168, introduces a bug that leads to game crashes with an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error.

In some cases, the PC reboots automatically after the crash. Microsoft says the problem affects Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2 and is looking into whether the update itself or conflicting third-party software is to blame.

Games affected by the bug include Arc Raiders, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals.

Windows 11 KB5121003 Crash Reports and Arm App Problems

After a Reddit user reported the problem last week, others confirmed they were seeing crashes, error messages, and random reboots after installing the update.

One user shared event logs, WER reports, and a kernel dump analysis that suggested the game crashes were actually system BSODs happening while playing Arc Raiders.

According to the analysis, the crashes are linked to a pre-existing "bad-handle bug" that Windows used to ignore or just return an error for when an invalid handle was closed.

With the latest update, kernel handle validation is stricter, so closing an invalid handle now triggers a bug check 0x93 INVALID_KERNEL_HANDLE instead of being ignored. Microsoft has confirmed the issue on its Windows release health dashboard and is investigating what is causing it.

The update is also causing problems beyond game crashes. According to a Microsoft Learn post by Brian Stringfellow, Teams and the new Outlook have stopped working on Arm devices after installing KB5121003.

Teams crashes shortly after opening, and the new Outlook does not launch, though the classic Outlook app still works as expected.

Stringfellow reports the issue on a Snapdragon-powered Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition. He notes that the same problem showed up earlier this year after installing KB5094126 and was fixed by rolling back that update, but it has returned with the latest release. Other users have confirmed similar issues on the HP OmniBook 3 and Surface Pro 11, both using Arm64 processors.

KB5121003 Workarounds and Microsoft's Fix Status

Microsoft has not provided an official workaround, but some users have shared steps that worked for them:

1. Roll back KB5121003 using DISM, which one user reports stopped the crashes.
2. Pause Windows Update for up to one month to prevent the update from automatically reinstalling.
3. As a longer-term fix, remove old drivers responsible for the bad-handle bug, which one user recommends as a permanent solution.
4. On affected Arm devices, use the classic Outlook app, which continues to work, while Teams and the new Outlook remain broken.

These steps are user-reported and not from Microsoft, so results may vary. Microsoft has confirmed the game crash issue on Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 and is still investigating whether the update or third-party software is responsible.

There is no fix or official workaround yet. Microsoft has also not responded to the separate reports about Teams and new Outlook not working on Arm devices. Users can check the Windows release health dashboard for updates or roll back the update for now.

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