The August 2026 Windows update breaks your PC games: here's how to fix it.

You launch ARC Raiders or Les Finales after the August Patch Tuesday, and bam — freeze, crash, blue screen. You're not alone. Since August 11, 2026 and the installation of KB5121003 , thousands of players find themselves with unplayable games on Windows 11 (versions 24H2 and 25H2).

Microsoft officially opened an investigation on August 20. Embark Studios, the studio behind The Finals and ARC Raiders, has already identified the culprit: a kernel driver called inpoutx64.sys . And the good news is that the fix is simple — even if Microsoft is still dragging its feet to release an official patch.

We'll explain everything to you: the affected games, why it crashes, and especially how to fix it in 5 minutes.

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Reports started coming in as early as August 12-13, just after the automatic deployment of KB5121003. The games confirmed as affected:

• ARC Raiders — repeated crashes, sometimes with a complete reboot of the PC (up to 6 crashes in one session according to some players)
• Les Finales — freeze + error EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
• MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls — crashes at launch or in the middle of a game

But it's not limited to just these three. Players are also reporting issues with some anti-cheat software that crash after the update. And on Reddit, threads are multiplying with titles like "my game crashes since the Windows update" — classic.

The symptoms vary from one PC to another:

• Game that freezes completely (frozen screen, nothing responds anymore)
• Error-free closure — the game closes by itself, return to the desktop without message
• EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION — the most common error in crash logs
• "Hang detected on GameThread" — a variant reported on ARC Raiders
• Restarting the PC — the most annoying: the system reboots without warning in the middle of a game

Embark Studios published a message on Discord on August 18: "Ceci est un crash lié au fichier inpoutx64.sys, qui a changé avec la mise à jour de Windows." In short, the patch KB5121003 has changed something in the way Windows manages this driver — and it breaks everything.

inpoutx64.sys , what exactly is it? It is a third-party kernel driver that allows direct access to hardware ports. It is installed quietly by software such as:

• Razer Synapse / Razer Update Tool — the most often cited by the affected players
• RGB control software (ASUS Aura, MSI Dragon Center, Corsair iCUE...)
• Motherboard monitoring utilities
• Some gaming peripherals who need low-level access

A player on Reddit also recounted having made the diagnosis himself: he found inpoutx64.sys installed by the Razer Update Tool , and as soon as he disabled the service, no more crashes. The vicious thing is that you don't even know that this driver is there — it installs silently with your Razer software or your RGB app.

The problem is on Microsoft's side. August's Patch Tuesday includes Secure Boot updates and changes in the kernel, and something in these modifications has rendered inpoutx64.sys incompatible . Microsoft knows it, they are investigating, but zero official fix for now.

This is the solution officially recommended by Embark Studios. It takes 2 minutes, no need to be an expert. Here are the steps:

Step 1 — Open the Start menu, type cmd , right-click on Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator .

Step 2 — Type the following command and press Enter :

sc stop inpoutx64

Step 3 — Then, type :

sc delete inpoutx64

Step 4 — Open File Explorer and go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\ . Search for the file inpoutx64.sys and delete it.

Step 5 — Restart your PC.

That's it. After that, ARC Raiders, The Finals and the others should restart normally. If you want a less radical solution, you can also just disable the service without deleting it: open regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\inpoutx64 and set the value Start to 4 (disabled). Restart — that is often enough.

Note : deleting inpoutx64.sys may affect some functions of your RGB software (custom lighting, macros). Nothing serious — your PC and your devices will continue to work, you will just lose fine control of your LEDs until the publisher updates their software.

If you don't want to touch system files — or if fix 1 doesn't work for you — you can simply uninstall the August patch. Several players confirm that it solves the problem instantly.

Here’s how to do it:

• Go in Settings > Windows Update > Update history
• At the very bottom, click on Uninstall updates
• Search KB5121003 in the list
• Click on it, then Uninstall
• Restart your PC

Attention : KB5121003 is a security patch that fixes over 400 vulnerabilities. Uninstalling it temporarily reopens these vulnerabilities. It's not dramatic for a few days (especially if you're behind a router with a firewall), but it's not ideal in the long term. As soon as Microsoft releases a fix, reinstall the updates.

To prevent Windows from automatically reinstalling the patch in the meantime, you can suspend updates for 1 week via Settings > Windows Update > Pause updates.

Game crashes are the most visible problem, but KB5121003 causes other damage:

• Refresh rate that drops by itself — players with 144 Hz or 240 Hz screens find themselves stuck at 60 Hz after the update
• broken HDR — regression in HDR rendering, washed-out colors or screen flickering when HDR is active
• Temporary black screens — especially at startup or when exiting sleep mode
• Windows Hello PIN — the PIN resets at each restart, forcing a reconnection to the Microsoft account at each boot. A user describes an "infinite loop" where the certificate is recreated and then corrupted at each restart

If you're affected by screen issues (refresh rate, HDR), checking your GPU drivers (Nvidia or AMD) and reinstalling them properly can help. For Windows Hello, the only known solution for now is to uninstall KB5121003.

No. The problem mainly affects PCs where the driver inpoutx64.sys is installed — so those using Razer software, RGB tools, or certain monitoring utilities. If you don't have this driver, you probably haven't noticed anything.

Open a Command Prompt as admin and type sc query inpoutx64 . If the service exists, you will see its status. Otherwise, you will get an error message "service does not exist" — and you are not affected by this bug.

No. It's a third-party driver, not a Windows component. Your PC, your peripherals, and your games will continue to function normally. You will just lose some advanced features of your RGB software (custom lighting, device macros) until the publisher updates their software.

Microsoft has been officially investigating since August 20, 2026, and is asking players to report the bug via the Feedback Hub app. A fix should arrive in the coming weeks, probably via a cumulative update or a Known Issue Rollback (KIR). In the meantime, the methods above work.

Start with method 1 (remove inpoutx64.sys). It's more targeted and you keep the 400+ security fixes from the patch. Uninstall KB5121003, it's the plan B if nothing else works — but it temporarily leaves you without the latest security patches.