NVIDIA Probes Windows 11 KB5074109 Gaming Issues and Uninstall Workarounds

NVIDIA has opened an engineering investigation after a wave of reports tied to Microsoft’s January 13, 2026 cumulative for Windows 11 (KB5074109) described sudden frame‑rate drops, visual artifacts and intermittent black‑screen events during gameplay — and community reproductions show that uninstalling the KB often restores normal behavior, leaving gamers faced with a hard choice between security and stability.

Background / Overview​

Microsoft shipped KB5074109 as the January 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative for Windows 11 (affecting 24H2 and 25H2 builds), bundling more than 100 security fixes alongside servicing changes designed to address issues like NPU idle battery drain and Secure Boot certificate handling. For the vast majority of systems, the update installs unobtrusively; for a measurable subset — notably many NVIDIA GeForce systems in e home rigs — the post‑install experience has included degraded gaming performance, visual corruption, and brief black screens.
The symptom set is heterogenous but repeatable in many reported reproductions: average FPS drops commonly reported in the ~10–30% range in affected scenarios, significantly worse 1%/0.1% lows that incer, transient rectangular or banding artifacts in motion-heavy scenes, and short black‑screen flashes or longer blank‑desktop episodes that sometimes require a reboot. Multiple community threads and independent outlets have documented that, after removing KB5074109, affected machines often return to prior performance and visual fidelity.
NVIDIA’s community teed the reports and confirmed engineers are investigating; an NVIDIA representative on GeForce forums indicated that, in reproduced cases, uninstalling KB5074109 appears to mitigate the artifacts while the vendor triages root cause. That advisory — helpful for affected players — also creates a difficult remediation calculus because rolling back a cumulative security update exposes systems to the vulnerabilities the patch was designed to fix.

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What users are seeing: symptoms and orruption and artifacting​

Players have posted screenshots and short clips showing rectangular blocks, banding, shadow anomalies and other motion‑dependent corruption in titles such as Forza Horizon 5 and other modern DX12/Open‑world games. The artifacts typically appear in high‑load scenes — long draw distances, heavy dynamic lighting — and are often transient, resolving after a driver reset or a brief freeze; in other cases they persist until a rollback of the Windows patch. Multiple independent reports tie the corruption to the display/driver stack ratering logic.

Frame‑rate regressions and worsened lows​

Community benchmarks and anecdotal logs converge on 10–20 FPS average drops in affected titles for many users, with low‑percentile frametimes (1%/0.1%) often showing proportionally larger degradations that make gameplay feel noticeably less smooth. Those numbers vary by GPU model, resolution, driver version and game engine, but the directional consensus — measurable, reproducible performance loss tied to the update — is strong enough to have driven extensive troubleshooting.

Black screens and desktop anomalies​

Two black‑screen flavors emerged in reports: (1) a delayed desktop/boot blanking where, after sign‑in, the display remains black for several seconds (or longer) before recovery; and (2) short black‑out flashes while gaming or when returning from full‑screen applications. In some cases the wallpaper resets to black and personalization settings must be reapplied. Microsoft has acknowledged certain boot‑related regressions and published targeted follow‑ups; an optional preview updateed to address a subset of black‑screen scenarios, but community reports show that in‑game artifacts and FPS drops can persist even after that preview is applied.

Driver reset, nvlddmkm entries and stability problems​

Event logs in several reproductions show GPU driver resets and nvlddmkm‑related errors accompanying artifacting or black screens, suggesting an interaction between the Windows display/presentation stack and NVIDIA’s driver code path. Some community troubleshooting steps included complete driver removal via DDU and clean driver reinstalls; in many affected machines, the only reliable recovery was uninstalling KB5074109. That practical result steered NVIDIA to treat the update as a likely trigger in at least some configurations.

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Timeline and vendor responses​

• January 13, 2026 — Microsoft releases KB5074109 as the January cumulative for Windows 11 (24H2/25H2), bundling 100+ security fixes and servicing changes.
• Mid‑ to late January 2026 — Users begin reporting gaming regressions, visual artifacts and intermittent black screens across forums, Feedback Hub, Reddit and enthusiast sites. Initial noise flagged NVIDIA drivers as potential culprits because new GeForce releases also occurred that month.
• Late January 2026 — NVIDIA community staff acknowledge reports and confirm an internal investigation; engineers find many reproductions where removing KB5074109 restores correct GPU behavior. NVIDIA issues troubleshooting guidance and monitors telemetry.
• January 27–28, 2026 — NVIDIA ships new driver builds (Game Ready 591.86 and security/legacy 582.28) that produced mixed feedback; community posts described additional instability for some users on 591.xx series drivers, but analysis began to shift toward KB5074109 as the root trigger in reproducible cases.
• Late January 2026 — Microsoft issues optional/preview follow‑ups (notably KB5074105 as a Release Preview/optional preview) to address black‑screen conditions and related reliability issues; the optional update mitigates certain desktop/boot black screens but does not claim to fix every reported in‑game artifact.
• Ongoing — Vendors continue triage: NVIDIA explores narrow driver hotfixes, Microsoft stages preview and OOB patches, and community testbeds collect logs and reproduce failures for engineering teams.

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Investigating root cause: what we know and what remains uncertain​

The strongest signals​

• Reproducibility: multiple independent reproductions from community testbeds and users show the same directional behavior — artifacts and FPS loss appear after KB5074109 and disappear after uninstalling it. That pattern makes the KB a primary suspect rather than coincidence.
• Overlap with recent driver changes: NVIDIA released several drivers in January (including Game Ready 591.86 and a security driver 582.28). While some community posts initially blamed drivers, triage by both vendors and independent testers increasingly points to the Windows cumulative as the common denominator on affected machines. That said, the display stack is an intersection of OS, driver and application complexity; interactions between a servicing change in Windows and how the NVIDIA driver initializes presentation/power states can plausibly produce the observed symptoms.

Uncertainties and open questions​

• Heterogeneous impact: not every NVIDIA system is affected. The issue appears to require a particular combination of variables — GPU family, driver branch, game engine/renderer behavior, display modes (fullscreen vs borderless), system UEFI/Secure Boot settings and possibly third‑party overlays or anti‑cheat hooks. That heterogeneity complicates root‑cause attribution and targeted testing.
• Exact code path: neither vendor has published a definitive technical root cause (e.g., a specific COM interface, DWM path, or driver function). Public vendor statements are triage‑level and focused on mitigation, so engineering teams still need to correlate telemetry traces and crash dumps to an explicit failing component. Until engineering posts an RCA, some claims remain correlative rather than proven.
• Security trade‑offs: the practical workaround many users rely on — uninstalling KB5074109 — removes fixes for vulnerabilities the cumulative addressed. The cost of that rollback varies by environment (consumer vs enterprise), but it is nontrivial. Administrators must weigh exposure to potentially serious CVEs against the functional disruption the patch induces on certain gaming rigs.

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Practical guidance for gamers and IT managers​

For affected home gamers​

• Validate before you act:
• Reproduce the problem in a controlled way (same title, same settings). Capture a short video and Event Viewer logs showing nvlddmkm or driver resets.
• Try a clean driver reinstall using DDU in Safe Mode, then install the latest stable Game Ready or Studio driver appropriate for your usage. Many users found this helps with driver‑only regressions.
• Try Microsoft’s optional preview (KB5074105):
• KB5074105 is an optional Release Preview/preview update that includes targeted fixes for black‑screen scenarios and other reliability changes. Because it’s optional, it will not install automatically; you must opt into “Optional updates” in Windows Update. Some users reported success on boot‑related black screens after applying it, but artifact and FPS regressions have persisted for otherspport.micro
• If the problem persists and you cannot tolerate the regressions:
• As a last resort, and only if you understand the security implications, you can uninstall KB5074109 to restore prior behavior. Document your system state, create a full backup or system image first, and reapply necessary security mitigations where possible (e.g., enable other protective measures). Uninstalling the combined SSU/LCU may have caveats; follow Microsoft’s documented uninstall steps and be aware that some servicing components may persist.
• Keep a watch for vendor updates:
• NVIDIA may release a narrowly scoped hotfix driver to mitigate the interaction without requiring a Windows rollback; Microsoft will likely include the fixes in February’s Patch Tuesday. Monitor official channels and apply tested fixes rather than iterative trial‑and‑error.

For enterprise IT and managed environments​

• Do not recommend blanket uninstalls:
• Rolling back a security cumulative across a fleet is a high‑risk move. Coordinate with security teams and vendor support, and stage any rollback in a test ring first. The incident highlights why controlled rings and staged deployments remain essential.
• Collect telemetry and open vendor tickets:
• If you see reproducible failures, capture crash dumps, Event Vver logs and time‑correlated update history. Provide these to Microsoft and NVIDIA support so engineering can correlate telemetry at scale. Well‑documented enterprise cases accelerate triage.
• Consider targeted mitigations:
• Where rollback is unacceptable, test KB5074105 in a pilot andptoms abate. If they do not, negotiate vendor SLAs for a narrowly scoped remediation or driver hotfix; escalate through support channels with documented repro steps.

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Why this matters: risk, testing, and the update model​

This episode illuminates several broader lessons about modern Windows servicing and the PC ecosystem:

• The display stack is a fragile intersection. Small servicing changes in OS presentation and timing can interact with driver initialization, power management and game engines in unpredictable ways. When you add vendor driver churn on top of OS servicing, the combinatorial testing matrix explodes, raising the probability that a rare combination will cause visible regressions.
• Patch rollouts must balance security and compatibility. KB5074109 fixed many important CVEs; nevertheless, security teams and product groups must reconcile the trade‑off between aggressive, universal security rollouts and the real, user‑facing regressions these rollouts can cause in specific workloads (gaming being high‑visibility but not the only example).
• Joint vendor testing and telemetry sharing need improvement. Faster root‑cause identification requires high‑quality telemetry correlation between Microsoft, GPU vendors and major game publishers/engine vendors. Preserving user privacy while enabling detailed triage is nontrivial, but essential to reduce windows of exposure and limit broad rollbacks.
• Communications matter. For end users, the lack of immediate, clear guidance creates friction: do you uninstall a security patch or wait? Public vendor posts that explain the trade‑offs, list reproducible scenarios, and offer step‑by‑step mitigations reduce risky behavior and improve outcomes. NVIDIA’s forum acknowledgements helped focus attention; more detailed engineering guidance would help even more.

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Technical takeaways for developers and QA teams​

• Expand test matrices for servicing waves:
• Add real‑world stress tests that exercise modern game engines, overlays (Discord, Steam, Nvidia overlay), anti‑cheat stacks and display mode transitions (exclusive fullscreen, borderless, HDR toggles) during pre‑release validation. This reduces the chance a servicing change will expose a timing or fence ordering bug.
• Prioritize focused telemetry channels:
• Implement lightweight, opt‑in telemetry hooks specifically for display stack regression detection (frame drops, driver resets, DWM crashes) that provide actionable context to vendor engineers while retaining user consent and privacy safeguards.
• Offer clearer rollback guidance:
• When a security update has unintended side effects, vendors should publish an explicit mitigation playbook (preview update vs driver hotfix vs temporary uninstall), including safe backup/restore steps and an inventory of security trade‑offs for each mitigation path. That reduces risky ad‑hoc behavior by users.

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Short‑term outlook and expectations​

• NVIDIA’s investigation is active and engineering triage is ongoing; expect at least one of the following in the near term: coordination notes with Microsoft, a narrowly scoped hotfix driver from NVIDIA, or a Microsoft servicing patch that addresses the driver interaction without requiring a rollback. Community signals and vendor posts indicate fixes are being prepared and staged.
• Microsoft’s KB5074105 preview addresses certain black‑screen and Explorer/login issues; it is optional and staged. It will not necessarily cure all graphics artifacts or FPS regressions, so affected users should treat it as a tactical test rather than a universal remedy. Expect the definitive, widely distributed fix to arrive in a subsequent cumulative (the next Patch Tuesday window) or as an out‑of‑band remediation if engineering prioritizes it.
• For the average gamer, the pragmatic path is: (1) document and reproduce the issue, (2) try a clean driver reinstall (DDU + latest stable driver), (3) test KB5074105 in a controlled way, and (4) only consider uninstalling KB5074109 as a last resort after weighing security exposure and making a backup.

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Conclusion​

The January Windows 11 cumulative (KB5074109) underscored how tightly coupled security servicing, system firmware, graphics drivers, and user workloads have become. NVIDIA’s confirmation that it is investigating gaming regressions — and the consistent community reproductions showing that uninstalling the KB restores behavior on many affected rigs — make the update the most plausible proximate trigger for the visual corruption, black screens and FPS losses reported since mid‑January. But the problem is not reducible to a single vendor’s fault: it sits in the intersection of OS changes, driver updates and the complex timing of modern game engines and overlays.
For gamers, the path forward is cautious, evidence‑driven troubleshooting and careful application of vendor recommendations. For enterprise managers and vendors, the incident is a reminder to strengthen cross‑vendor testing, telemetry sharing and staged rollout practices. The ideal outcome is a coordinated fix that restores both security and graphics stability — and vendors appear to be moving toward that outcome as engineering work continues.

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Source: Technobezz Nvidia investigates Windows 11 update causing black screens for gamers

 

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The January 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11 (KB5074109) has left a significant number of NVIDIA-powered gaming PCs with lower frame rates, stuttering, visual artifacts, and intermittent black screens — and NVIDIA is advising affected gamers to temporarily remove the update while Microsoft and driver teams investigate a permanent fix.

Background / Overview​

KB5074109 was released as the January 2026 cumulative security and quality update for Windows 11 and shipped as the baseline build for several 24H2/25H2 systems. The package contains a broad set of security fixes and non-security improvements intended to harden the platform against current threats and address known reliability problems. In short order after distribution, however, clusters of users — especially those running NVIDIA GeForce GPUs — began reporting a consistent symptom set: sudden frame‑rate drops (commonly in the 10–30% range), degraded 1%/0.1% lows that manifest as micro‑stutter, short black‑screen freezes when returning from fullscreen, and visible motion artifacts in modern DirectX titles.
Major GPU‑centric communities, vendor forum staffers, and multiple independent newsrooms aggregated and reproduced reports quickly enough that NVIDIA acknowledged the reports internally and publicly: the problem appears correlated with KB5074109 on many affected systems, and the fastest effective workaround reported in real‑world tests has been removing that specific LCU (cumulative update) until a coordinated fix from Microsoft and driver mitigations become available.
Microsoft has not left users in the dark: the January roll included several follow‑on emergency and preview updates aimed at related regressions (including optional preview fixes and out‑of‑band emergency LCUs), and the company is testing additional mitigations. Nevertheless, at the time of writing many competitive and single‑player gamers are weighing the trade‑off between immediate security coverage and playable performance.

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What gamers are seeing — the symptom cluster​

Short paragraphs to make each symptom scannable:

• Average FPS drops. Numerous community benchmarks and anecdotal threads report average frame‑rate reductions of roughly 10–30% in demanding scenes after KB5074109 was installed. The impact is most visible in fast, high‑frame competitive titles and dense RTX scenes.
• Worsened 1%/0.1% lows. Even when average FPS is only modestly affected, the low‑percentile frame times — the moments that define perceived smoothness — often degenerate, producing stutter and input lag spikes.
• Short black‑screen freezes. Users describe brief blackouts when switching into or out of fullscreen, or when the compositor repaints after alt‑tab. Some systems recover automatically; others require a game restart.
• Visual artifacts and corruption. Motion‑dependent artifacts (bands, blocks, and shadowing anomalies) have been reported in several DirectX 12 titles, particularly in heavy lighting or particle scenarios.
• Occasional driver crashes / recovery events. In some cases the GPU driver reports a TDR or similar recovery and Windows presents an error or reloads the display driver.

This pattern is most frequently reported on Windows 11 systems running NVIDIA drivers; AMD and Intel GPU users have substantially fewer reports. That uneven distribution guided vendor triage: when a problem disproportionately affects one vendor’s stack, it often points to a fragile interaction between the OS changes and the vendor’s driver behavior.

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Why an OS security update can break gaming performance​

Modern Windows updates are not just “patches” in the traditional sense; they can and do modify kernel subsystems, the graphics stack, timing and scheduling behavior, security hardening for components like the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), and even how device drivers are loaded and called. A few architecture realities that explain how a broad LCU might upset a GPU driver:

• The GPU presentation pipeline is a coordinated dance between the game engine, the graphics runtime (DirectX), the Windows compositor (DWM), the kernel graphics layer (dxgkrnl), and the GPU vendor driver. A small timing or memory‑ordering change anywhere in that chain can alter frame pacing.
• Security hardening or API changes that alter access patterns or buffer lifetimes may expose latent race conditions or assumptions inside a driver or game engine that weren’t previously triggered.
• Kernel scheduling and power management changes can change how CPU threads feeding the GPU are paced, which alters submission timing and can increase GPU idle/wake overhead or produce uneven frame spacing.
• Visual corruption and artifacting often indicate that a rendering resource was read, presented, or synchronized incorrectly — again, a timing or memory ordering issue that can be surfaced by a platform change.

In the KB5074109 case, public descriptions from affected users and vendor forum staff suggest changes in the January LCU touched display/presentation behavior and scheduling surfaces. Microsoft’s subsequent optional and out‑of‑band releases explicitly addressed some display and application‑interaction regressions — which reinforces the conclusion that the update impacted presentation and I/O surfaces that matter to real‑time graphics.
Important caveat: diagnosing root cause in vendor ecosystems is complex. The publicly visible evidence points to an interaction between the Windows LCU and specific NVIDIA driver paths on affected systems; however, the exact kernel call, driver routine, or timing window responsible for every symptom is still under investigation. Until official triage reports are published by Microsoft and NVIDIA, some technical attributions remain inference based on observed behavior and triage patterns.

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NVIDIA’s response and the practical recommendation​

NVIDIA community staff and some company representatives confirmed they were actively investigating reports that linked the January Windows LCU to gaming regressions. In forum threads, a support representative advised affected users that, based on current evidence, uninstalling KB5074109 frequently resolves the artifacts and performance defects while teams work on a long‑term fix.
That guidance has been echoed in multiple troubleshooting threads and independent outlet reporting: if your gaming experience degraded after the Windows January update and you are running an NVIDIA GPU, the most reliable temporary remedy reported to date is uninstalling the KB5074109 LCU and pausing Windows Update until Microsoft and NVIDIA ship fixes that address the regressions without sacrificing security protections.

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How to safely evaluate and (if necessary) remove KB5074109​

Before you change system updates, back up important data and understand the security trade‑offs: KB5074109 includes fixes for active and serious vulnerabilities. Removing it reduces your exposure until a proper remediation arrives. That said, if your machine is primarily a gaming device and you’re suffering severe regressions and you accept the temporary security trade, these steps summarize the common rollback approaches reported by technicians and community staff.

Quick uninstall from Settings (when the desktop is available)​

• Open Settings → Windows Update.
• Click Update history.
• Scroll to the “Related settings” section and choose Uninstall updates.
• Find KB5074109 in the list, click it, then choose Uninstall.
• Restart when prompted and verify gaming performance.

When Uninstall fails or returns error 0x800f0905​

Some users have encountered uninstall failures (error 0x800f0905) or discovered KB5074109 cannot be removed through the Settings UI. Recommended recovery paths in that scenario:

• If you have a System Restore point from before the update, restore to that snapshot.
• Use the Windows Update Troubleshooter or run DISM and SFC to repair the component store:
• Open an elevated Command Prompt or PowerShell and run:
• DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
• sfc /scannow
• Reboot and attempt uninstall again.
• If the desktop is inaccessible, boot into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) via Automatic Repair and choose to uninstall recent updates from there.
• As a last resort, use a system image backup to revert to a pre‑patch state.

Pause updates after uninstall​

If uninstalling succeeds and you require stability while waiting for a fix, pause automatic updates from Settings → Windows Update → Pause updates (choose the maximum pause period available). This reduces the chance of the patch reinstalling before a corrected cumulative update is published.

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Alternate mitigations if you cannot or will not uninstall the LCU​

Not every user will want to remove security updates. If you must keep KB5074109 installed (for example, on a work machine or if you cannot uninstall cleanly), try these mitigations which have sometimes improved behavior for affected users:

• Clean driver reinstall: Use a clean‑install option from the NVIDIA installer or use a third‑party tool to fully remove the driver and then reinstall a known‑stable driver version. Users reported mixed results across the 591.xx driver series; results vary by GPU and system.
• Roll back to a previous NVIDIA driver: Some affected users reported improvements after reverting to earlier Game Ready driver versions; others found newer hotfix drivers better. If you test drivers, do it one version at a time and benchmark before and after.
• Toggle Hardware‑accelerated GPU scheduling: Some reported temporary relief by switching this setting off or on (Settings → System → Display → Graphics → Change default graphics settings). This affects how the OS interacts with GPU scheduling and may avoid a problematic code path.
• Disable fullscreen optimizations for a particular game executable (Properties → Compatibility → Disable fullscreen optimizations).
• Set Windows power plan to High performance or create a custom plan that prevents aggressive CPU core parking.
• Test exclusive fullscreen versus borderless windowed modes — behavior can vary and one presentation mode may avoid the issue.
• If you’re comfortable with advanced tuning, monitor DPC latency, CPU thread priorities, and engine frametime distribution to spot and partially compensate for pacing irregularities.

Important: these are workaround tactics, not cures. They can help temporarily for some systems but will not address underlying driver/OS behavior changes.

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The trade‑off: security vs. playability​

One of the hardest practical decisions here is choosing between immediate security coverage and immediate playability. KB5074109 fixed multiple vulnerabilities — including high‑impact issues — which legitimately warrants widespread installation. Conversely, if your primary use is gaming and the update has materially degraded the experience to the point of being unusable, rollback is a defensible short‑term choice if you take steps to minimize exposure (pause updates, avoid risky browsing, maintain good backups).
Weigh these factors:

• Is the device used for sensitive work or contains corporate credentials? If yes, leaning on the security side is prudent.
• Are you experiencing measurable and repeatable regressions only after KB5074109? Correlation strengthens the case for rollback.
• Can you postpone internet‑facing activity until Microsoft and NVIDIA issue vendor‑level mitigations? If so, the rollback window is safer.

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What Microsoft and NVIDIA are doing (and what to expect)​

Microsoft has acknowledged a cluster of regressions in the January servicing cycle and has deployed follow‑up optional and out‑of‑band releases to correct specific symptoms (for example, fixes for black screens and cloud‑storage‑related app hangs were delivered via targeted updates and emergency LCUs). At the same time NVIDIA engineers are investigating interactions between the new Windows servicing and GeForce drivers; internal staff have advised removal of KB5074109 as a current workaround while engineering teams work through driver and OS stack traces.
In practice this means:

• Expect coordinated fixes from Microsoft in subsequent cumulative updates or targeted out‑of‑band patches that reconcile the security fixes with platform behavior changes.
• Expect NVIDIA to ship driver updates (Game Ready or hotfix drivers) if driver‑level mitigations can isolate and repair the misbehaving code paths without reducing compliance with the new security expectations.
• Users should monitor for official vendor advisories; once Microsoft and NVIDIA confirm a combined mitigation strategy, reinstall the revised LCU and updated drivers promptly.

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Practical advice for gamers right now​

• Reproduce the problem. Benchmark a reliable scene before and after any change so you can quantify impact.
• Back up. Create a System Restore point or image before uninstalling updates or rolling back drivers.
• If you’re affected and primarily use the machine for personal gaming, consider uninstalling KB5074109 and pausing updates until a stable fix is verified.
• If you can’t uninstall, try driver rollback, clean installs, and the toggle items listed above as short‑term mitigations.
• Do not ignore security: if you uninstall KB5074109, plan to reinstall the corrected cumulative update and updated drivers as soon as Microsoft and NVIDIA confirm the issue is resolved.
• Use community and vendor channels for real‑world feedback before applying broad changes to multiple systems.

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What this incident reveals about Windows servicing and the gaming ecosystem​

This episode reiterates some enduring truths:

• Windows is a platform that touches everything on the PC; cumulative updates are necessarily large and can interact unexpectedly with vendor drivers and third‑party applications.
• The GPU presentation pipeline is timing‑sensitive. Security hardening or kernel changes that sound unrelated (for example, adjustments to DWM or interprocess synchronization) can still produce visible frame pacing and artifacting issues.
• Vendor coordination matters. Rapid communication between Microsoft and hardware vendors (and transparent advisories to end users) reduces confusion and speeds mitigation.
• For hobbyists and competitive gamers, the ability to pause updates and roll back to a known good state remains essential defensive tooling.

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How to stay informed and what to watch for​

• Watch for official Microsoft cumulative updates and their release notes mentioning fixes in the display/graphics stack or kernel presentation components.
• Track NVIDIA driver release notes for Game Ready and hotfix drivers that reference compatibility with recent Windows updates or that explicitly call out KB5074109 mitigations.
• Follow stable, reproducible community benchmarks and vendor forum confirmations before concluding a driver or OS change resolves the problem.
• When a fix is published, apply it first to a test machine (or create a system image) and verify your key titles and workflows behave before updating a primary gaming rig.

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Conclusion​

The KB5074109 situation is a textbook example of how essential security updates and real‑time graphics workloads can clash in subtle, user‑visible ways. NVIDIA’s recommendation to uninstall the January cumulative update reflects the current practical reality for many affected gamers: removing KB5074109 frequently restores frame rates and eliminates artifacts, but it is a temporary, risk‑bearing stopgap. Microsoft and NVIDIA are both actively investigating and testing fixes; the right long‑term solution will be a coordinated update that preserves the security improvements without regressing gaming performance.
For gamers: reproduce and measure, back up before making changes, and choose the approach that matches your threat model — rollback and pause updates for immediate playability, or hold for vendor fixes when security is the priority. Keep an eye on official vendor advisories, apply updates cautiously, and expect a corrected cumulative update or driver hotfix to arrive that resolves this conflict without forcing you to choose between security and smooth gameplay.

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Source: thewincentral.com Windows 11 KB5074109 Update Causes FPS Drops for NVIDIA Gamers