Hard crash (total PC lock-up) caused by Windows Update KB5045934 and/or KB5048667

I had been playing this game perfectly fine until today after I updated my graphics driver and installed the latest Windows Updates. After this, pretty much any time I tried to load a zone my PC hard locked and I had to restart my PC. After uninstalling the updates KB5045934 and KB5048667 everything is fine again. One or both of these Windows 11 updates doesn't play nicely with this game.

Just a heads up to any out there experiencing similar issues.

I have the same problem. Update KB5048667 causes the entire operating system to hang during the loading screen in POE when changing the map.

Same issue. Uninstalling KB5048667 fixes it. Came here looking to see if it is addressed as windows attempted to reinstall it, had to pause updates to stop it from reinstalling.

9800x3d / 4070 ti super / 64gb ddr5 ram, game installed on an m.2

Seems to be the Security Update (KB5048667). Thanks to this post I have uninstalled that sec update as that is basically when my issue started and things seem to be working fine now. GGG really needs to look at this and find a patch. I am not for uninstalling security updates to play a game.