Windows 24h2 desktop freezes after closing game(s)

[Zef]

Anyone else encountered this? Latest drivers, updates, everything up to date, .. SFC / DISM OK,..

Basically no issues ingame or on launch but sometimes when i close a game the entire desktop freezes and the only way to resolve the issue is to hard reset the entire pc?

I only just upgraded to 24H2 so i stil have time to rollback

[Alice Liddell]

Something similar happened with Win10, one reason you should have taken Win10 into Oct 2025 because Win11 will continue to have issues for a couple more years just like Win10, Win7, Win Vista all had issues for years after release with Vista being the most widely hated, despised, and negatively remembered by older generations.

Someone posted something yesterday about M.2 SSD firmware updates which may help Win11 users that are using the M.2 as an OS drive (not recommended) pertaining Win11 Update 24H2 (I personally cannot confirm nor deny that accusation because my Win11 24H2 (2019 laptop) runs perfectly on the M.2 dynamic disk (desktops will differ).

What I say, rollback if the older update was working flawlessly because there is a rap-sheet of issues with Win11 Update 24H2 still to this day.

Personally, I would like to know if there were any new .Net Framework updates (a bane in my side on Win10) but then I found out that even offline, Win10/11 will corrupt it's own system files (which I have been told was by "design" and used as a form of "checks and balances" regarding the OS).

People ask me why have I not updated Win10 in the past 6 months, well now you know.

It seems Security Updates are the only updates generally needed for this old Win10 OS.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Keep Task Manager open at all times and disable it's "Always on-top" option.
Then in Task Manager > Details, set Task Manager to Priority = Real-time.

Then if something locks up, you should easily be able to go address that via Task Manager. If the Desktop (Explorer) crashes or you need to restart that, you can in Task Manager > Details > explorer.exe > End Process. Then end the process for sihost.exe to properly restart it. This can often help too with bad or missing icon cache

Some larger games that use alot of RAM, may actually take a few moments to release all the RAM it was using after game has closed. So always wait a few moments as well before considering the system "frozen"

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes could be driver fault and it's failing yo recover on its own. But again, how long do you wait when such a freeze occurs.

But yes always check Event Viewer > Windows > Application for details and clues.