My Windows 11 Pro PC randomly freezes or crashes, sometimes several times a day and sometimes while idle. The most common stop code is HYPERVISOR_ERROR (0x20001). The system uses a Ryzen 5 3600, MSI B450M-A PRO MAX II with BIOS A.40, RTX 3060 Ti, and 16 GB of RAM. I have updated the BIOS and graphics drivers, removed MSI Center, disabled the NVIDIA overlay, and run SFC and DISM successfully. I also disabled Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Platform, Memory Integrity, VBS, and set hypervisorlaunchtype to off. However, systeminfo still reports that virtualization-based security is running and that a hypervisor has been detected. WinDbg repeatedly points to HYPERVISOR_ERROR in nt!HvlSkCrashdumpCallbackRoutine. I previously received a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE involving Apple's USB hotspot driver, netaapl64.sys, but the crashes are now mostly hypervisor-related. Could this be caused by an Insider Windows build, incorrect firmware settings, or failing CPU, RAM, or motherboard hardware?
1 Answer
It would be worth checking the firmware configuration rather than focusing only on Windows settings. Make sure the virtualization-related UEFI options are configured correctly, and check whether the system is using CSM instead of a proper UEFI configuration. Also look for any CPU power-management or optimization utilities that might still be changing voltage, clocks, or sleep states. If this is an Insider build, keep in mind that preview builds can introduce low-level stability problems, so testing a current stable Windows release would also help separate an OS issue from failing hardware.
The firmware is currently configured for CSM rather than UEFI, so that may be relevant. I don’t have a separate CPU power-optimization utility installed; the only likely software candidate is the NVIDIA app, although disabling its overlay didn’t stop the crashes.