If your games have been acting weird lately, you’re not alone. NVIDIA confirmed it’s investigating widespread gaming issues that started popping up right after Microsoft’s January 2026 Windows 11 update, and the company is straight-up telling affected users to uninstall the patch.
The problematic update, KB5074109, rolled out on January 13, 2026 as part of Microsoft’s routine Patch Tuesday. It was supposed to be just another security fix, but gamers with NVIDIA graphics cards quickly noticed something was very wrong.
Reports flooded forums describing black screens before the desktop loads, strange rectangular artifacts in games like Forza Horizon 5, and performance drops ranging from 10 to 20 FPS in demanding titles.
When security updates break your gaming rig
Manuel Guzman, an NVIDIA representative, addressed the situation directly on the company’s official forums. His response was surprisingly blunt: “Even though it started after a Windows 11 update, we are looking into it. As far as I know, the only way to resolve it appears to be uninstalling KB5074109”.
The fact that NVIDIA brought up the specific update number unprompted suggests the company has already connected the dots between the patch and the wave of complaints.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that the symptoms vary. Some players report severe FPS drops, others see visual corruption like weird shadows and black spots on roads, and a few are dealing with complete black screens or driver crashes tied to NVIDIA’s nvlddmkm stack.
Forza Horizon 5 has been mentioned repeatedly, with players posting screenshots of corrupted textures and shadowing anomalies that weren’t there before the update. The issues aren’t universal, many systems run fine, but enough users are affected that NVIDIA had to publicly acknowledge the problem.
The temporary fix nobody really wants
Uninstalling a security update isn’t ideal. KB5074109 patches over 100 security vulnerabilities, so removing it does leave your system more exposed. But for gamers experiencing the issues, it’s currently the only confirmed workaround.
Microsoft has released a subsequent optional update, KB5074105, that reportedly fixes some of the black screen issues, but it doesn’t address the artifacts and performance drops in games.
The whole situation echoes a similar incident from October 2025 when another Windows update, KB5066835, caused massive FPS drops. NVIDIA had to release a hotfix driver back then to restore normal performance.
This time around, no such hotfix has been announced yet, leaving affected players with a tough choice: keep the security patch and deal with broken games, or remove it and hope Microsoft or NVIDIA releases a proper fix soon.
This isn’t just about numbers dropping on a screen. For competitive gamers, consistent frame times and stable performance are everything.
When your RTX 4080 or 4090 suddenly starts stuttering in games that used to run buttery smooth, it’s more than annoying, it kills the experience. Reports suggest NVIDIA GPUs specifically are affected, with AMD and Intel users seemingly dodging the bullet this time.
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