Windows 10 version 2004 Randomly freezes

So i have been a few weeks now on build 21H1 and tested a few things out. I could finally track down the cause for the freezes in idle. It turned out to be the Corsair Link Software. I had to completly remove it and delete every trace of it, cause it was so deep in the system, that it even was causing problems in safe mode.

But now after a week of use without freezes, i am suddenly facing problems again with this version out of nowhere, which is very weird, cause i set up the system to not automatically update drivers and paused the windows updates, so that the system stays the same during the testing.

First problem i encounterd was stuttering youtube videos. It occured in both Chrome and Edge. Sometimes it also triggers the Nvidia driver to crash when going into video full screen mode. Screen goes black for a second and you hear the windows device sound. The reliability monitor throws out a LiveKernelEvent 117 error then and the driver gets reseted. I tried then to adress this problem by updating to the latest Nvidia driver 471.11. This resulted in even worse problems and giving out some nice blue screens. So i reverted back to the 466.27 using DDU. But still, it occurs just randomly. Before it ran a week without any crashes and as mentioned before, nothing has been changed.

The second problem is massive fps drops and stutters in games. Before in Build 1909, everthing ran buttersmooth. Now Games like Witcher 3 which ran before at a constant 110 fps with ultra settings in 3440x1440p drop suddenly to 20 or 30 fps and stutters.

I still think there is something wrong with the newer versions 2004, 20H2 and 21H1. Maybe they are just incompatible with X99 Chipsets and i7 5960X and other 5th gen processors and have not been tested properly before releasing.

Anyways i hope i could at least help someone with the idle freezes i encountered, by removing corsair link.

At least i got a windows image backup from my 1909 install, so i think i will just go back and have a working system again, without crashes, stutters or any other kind of annoying random problems. Have to delete and deactivate everything then, which has to do with windows update, that i dont get the forced updates against my will. And i will not buy a new Mainboard and CPU, just because of a silly software update. It still can keep up with all modern games and has more than enough power. I am just tired of microsoft breaking things and i wont invest more weeks of time just for troubleshooting and testing. I just want a working system, really miss the times with Windows 7. Something like this never ever happened before.

@Julian Winter,

Hi,

I have 2 machines at 21H1 Build 19043.1081 and both with Nvidia driver 471.11 dated 6/21/2021.

One machine has an Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 and the other has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060.

I have not seen issues with stuttering videos yet, but on the other end I'm not much of a gamer either, so I cannot really check out the same conditions that you have.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I cannot be much help to recreate your problem. :-(

Year 2014:

Dell XPS 8700, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz with GeForce GT 1030

Year 2020:

Dell XPS 8930, Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz with GeForce RTX 2060

So, yesterday i gave it one last try. I reinstalled again the 466.27 nvidia driver with a clean DDU removal before. Now the stutters in games are gone and it runs as it is supposed to be.

But only this 1 problem stayed everytime: stuttering and video driver crash when watching a youtube video in fullscreen using Chrome or Edge with hardware acceleration on.

So after i tried so many things like:

sfc scan

update all drivers

other windows test installs on other SSD

windows update

test with OC and without / turning off XMP

tried different video drivers

I did one final test, which made at first no sense to do. I used the other monitor from my second PC. An Asus PG279Q with a 2560x1440 resolution and G-Sync. With this Monitor i dont have stuttering in the Youtube videos, which is very odd, isn't it ? Then i put back my main monitor the Asus PG348Q 21:9 with 3440x1440 resolution and then again, stuttering and driver crash. Then i switched off G-Sync with this one. Stutter was gone then again.

So i think i may found the root of all this. It seems to be, that there is a conflict with the G-Sync of this Asus PG348Q in combination with Chrome (Version 91.0.4472.124) Hardware Acceleration and the Windows 21H1 Build. If all 2 of them are turned on, the stutter and crashes are there in fullscreen. But if i either turn off the Hardware Acceleration in Chrome or turn off the G-Sync, it works. Strange isn't it ? Even weirder, that it works in 1909, but not in this Build with the same drivers.

So, as the G-Sync works perfectly fine in all games, i prefer to leave just the Hardware Acceleration off in Chrome. I also think this won't be fixed in the near future, so i just leave it now, as it is.

Edit: Also when i set the resolution from 3440x1440 to 2560x1440 on the Asus PG348Q it even works with G-Sync without stutter. So it seems Hardware Acceleration has a problem with widescreen resolution in fullscreen in the 21H1 Build.

Hi there, after 3-4 months that i update my windows from 1909, i got 0 issues, i never had stutter, i got only freezes some months back, now everything is fine, 3900x, 2080ti etc.