Windows' August Update Is Crashing Games and Faking Virus Alerts — What to Do

If your PC started acting strange in the last couple of weeks — games crashing to desktop, a scary warning that your virus protection is off, your PIN suddenly refusing to log you in — you're not alone and your computer isn't dying. Microsoft's August 2026 cumulative update, KB5121003, went out on August 11 and brought a handful of real problems along with it.

Here's the tricky part, and the reason we're writing this instead of just telling everyone to roll it back: this is also the biggest security update of the year so far. It closes more than 400 vulnerabilities. Uninstalling it to fix a game crash is a bad trade. Let's separate what's actually broken from what just looks broken, and fix each one properly.

What KB5121003 actually broke

It affects Windows 11 version 24H2 and 25H2 (builds 26100.9168 and 26200.9168). Not every machine hits every issue — it depends on your hardware and what you have installed.

• Games crashing with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION — games freeze, close without warning, or the whole PC restarts. Microsoft has confirmed ARC Raiders, The Finals, and MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls are affected, and there are almost certainly others.
• A fake "Virus protection is turned off" warning — Windows Security shows a red alert claiming you're unprotected. On most machines this is a display bug in the August patch, not a real problem. Your protection is still running.
• PIN login failures — you type the right PIN and Windows rejects it or asks you to set it up again.
• Dead USB ports on some AMD systems — mice, keyboards, and drives stop being recognized after the update.
• Outlook problems — the update added stricter memory checks that conflict with some third-party search add-ins and with damaged Outlook cache files.

The game crashes: it's one driver file

This one has a clear cause. A kernel driver called inpoutx64.sys changed with the update. Embark Studios, who make The Finals, said it plainly: "This is a crash related to the file inpoutx64.sys, which changed with the Windows update."

That driver isn't part of your game. It's a low-level component that lets software talk directly to hardware, and it gets bundled with a lot of RGB lighting utilities, fan control software, and motherboard tuning tools — things like certain vendor control panels and overclocking apps. The August update tightened how Windows handles it, and anything still loading the old version can take your game down with it.

The workaround is to stop that driver from loading. It means stopping and deleting the service and removing the driver file from C:\Windows\System32\drivers\. That is genuinely a "measure twice" job — you're editing system services and deleting a file from a protected Windows folder, and a typo there is not a small mistake.

If you're comfortable in an elevated command prompt, it's a ten-minute fix. If reading that sentence made you nervous, please don't wing it. That's a fine reason to call us. We can walk you through it remotely in less time than it takes to read a forum thread about it.

Microsoft's official position as of this writing is that they're "presently investigating to determine if this is an issue caused by Microsoft." Translation: a proper patch is likely coming, but there's no date. If your games run fine, don't go looking for this file — leave it alone.

The fake virus warning: verify before you panic

The "Virus protection is turned off" notification after the August update is a known interface bug. But you should still confirm, because a real infection can produce a very similar warning, and scammers have been imitating this exact alert for years.

Open Start → Settings → Privacy & security → Windows Security → Virus & threat protection. If real-time protection shows as on in there, you're protected and the notification is lying to you. A reboot often clears it.

What matters more: a genuine Windows warning never includes a phone number. It never asks you to call Microsoft, never opens a full-screen page you can't close, and never asks for payment or remote access. If you're seeing any of that, it's the fake security popup scam, not this bug — close the browser and don't call the number.

PIN failures and dead USB ports

For the PIN, use "I forgot my PIN" on the login screen to reset it through your Microsoft account. If you're locked out entirely, your password still works as a fallback — click sign-in options on the lock screen to switch.

For USB on AMD systems, the usual fix is a chipset driver update straight from AMD, not from Windows Update. If your keyboard and mouse are both dead you may need another machine to download it, which is exactly the kind of catch-22 that's easier to hand to someone else.

Why you should keep the update installed anyway

It's worth being blunt about the stakes. KB5121003 fixes over 400 security vulnerabilities, including 37 remote code execution bugs — the kind where an attacker runs their own code on your machine — plus critical flaws in Remote Desktop, DNS Server, DHCP Server, and SMBv3.

Microsoft has actually shortened its own guidance on how long you should wait before installing quality updates, down to less than three days, because attackers now reverse-engineer patches and build working exploits within hours of release. The window between "patch published" and "patch exploited" is not what it was five years ago.

So: work around the symptoms, don't uninstall the update. Rolling it back to fix a game crash leaves 400+ holes open on your machine, and the game will get patched long before those do.

When it's worth calling someone

Plenty of this is DIY-able if you're patient. Call us when you're past the point of comfort:

• You're not confident deleting a driver from a system folder — and you shouldn't be, that's a reasonable line to draw
• The machine won't boot at all, or loops at startup
• Windows is asking for a BitLocker recovery key you don't have
• You've got a business PC and can't afford to experiment on it during the workday
• You genuinely can't tell whether the virus warning is the bug or the real thing

We're in Dawsonville and we cover all of North Georgia — Dawsonville, Cumming, Dahlonega, Gainesville and the surrounding towns. Botched-update repair is one of the most common things we see, and a lot of it we can handle remotely, same or next day.

Call or text (706) 203-2563. The diagnostic is $24.99 and it's credited toward the repair — and if we can't fix it, you don't pay.