Games closing for no reason? It might be a Nvidia/Windows update issue

Disclaimer:

This is just my personal experience. If you're not comfortable tweaking system settings or rolling back updates, it's best to seek assistance or further guidance.

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Over the past few days, I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my games—not just The Sims 4—were crashing within 5 minutes of launching. No black screens, no error messages—just sudden closures.

After spending 12 hours scouring Reddit and Nvidia forums, I finally pinpointed the issue:

• A Windows 10 update from May 14, 2025, messed up my graphics drivers and DirectX 12, causing instability.

• To mitigate this, I had to force some games, like Throne and Liberty, to run on DirectX 11 instead of 12.

• Thinking an update might help, I installed the latest Nvidia driver 576.52, but that only made things worse—The Sims 4 started crashing.

Solution that worked for me:

• I uninstalled the Windows 10 update from May 14 (you can do this via Windows Update settings or by restoring to a previous system point).

• Then, I performed a clean installation of Nvidia driver 566.36 using DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller).

After running several tests, everything seems stable now.

Important to note:

• I’m using a GeForce RTX 4070 Super.GamersNexus+2NVIDIA+2Reddit+2

• The 566.36 driver, released in December 2024, is currently recommended for stability and performance on 40-series GPUs.

• Many users with 40-series cards have reported issues with the newer 576.x drivers, as they appear to be optimized more for the upcoming 50-series GPUs .GamersNexus

XoXo

Tini