Microsoft blocks Windows 11 24H2 update on PCs with Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed

Are your games crashing or freezing after installing Windows 11 24H2? You are not alone.

Microsoft is blocking the Windows 11 24H2 update on PCs that have some Ubisoft games installed.

Gamers who had upgraded to the latest version of the operating system had reported that they had problems getting Assassin’s Creed games to run on their computer. They would fail to launch, freeze on loading a save, crash to the desktop, etc. Some of these games would crash without an error message. The thing is, these are not new issues that sprang up yesterday out of the blue. Users have been reporting such crashes for nearly 4 months when 24H2 was in preview. Just to emphasize the delay, these reports started two months before Windows 11 24H2 was released for all users. Microsoft only acknowledged the issue a few days ago.

Games are crashing on Windows 11 24H2

According to a Release Health update on the company’s website, the following games are impacted by crashes, loading issues, or freezing. Some users may also experience a black screen that is unresponsive.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed Origins
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
Star Wars Outlaws
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Microsoft says that it has blocked the Windows 11 24H2 update on PCs that have the above-mentioned games installed, and it is advising users NOT to upgrade to the latest version manually. Well, if you were wondering why you did not get the Windows 11 24H2 update, here’s the answer.

Could these issues be related to Denuvo’s DRM which is used in Ubisoft’s games? But, those aren’t the only games that are affected by crashes. Some players experienced similar crashes on Far Cry, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, Fallout 76, and Need for Speed Unbound. Not all of these have the DRM, so the issue lies elsewhere. One user pointed out that the issues seem to be caused by a file called NTDLL.DLL. Yup, there are two DLLs in the name. It uses the Windows Native API to handle memory and processor level operations. This in turn suggests that the issues are not related to games, and that the culprit may be Windows itself.

I remember when I wanted to replay Assassin’s Creed Origins during the pandemic, I had experienced lag spikes in the game. It was strange because I had played the game previously without any hiccups. Then I discovered that the lags were caused by an NVIDIA driver update, and I fixed the problem by rolling back to a previous version. That doesn’t seem to be the case this time around, it seems to be a more complicated problem. Currently, the only solution seems to be downgrading to Windows 11 23H2, which is terribly inconvenient.

Microsoft suggests users to end task games

While users await a proper fix, Microsoft has suggested a temporary workaround for the problem. Open the Task Manager, right-click on the game’s exe, and select End Task. That’s a great fix Microsoft, thanks for the advice. Why bother playing games that you paid for when you can experience the thrill of the latest and greatest bugs in Windows? All these bugs just seem to highlight that Windows 10 was so much better in comparison, it’s a shame it is reaching end of life support next year.

Anyway, Ubisoft has acknowledged these bugs on the Steam community forums, and is working on resolving the issues. Bleeping Computer reports that Ubisoft has already released a hotfix patch for Star Wars Outlaws, update v1.4.1 fixes the problem, but the release notes warn that players may experience some performance issues, and that a permanent fix is being worked on.

Here’s a completely unrelated thing that happened exactly one year ago. Ubisoft had a bit of a PR fiasco last year, when its in-game menus displayed pop-up ads, though these annoyances were attributed to a technical error.

Have you upgraded to Windows 11 24H2? If so, have you run into similar problems with games?

Summary