Intel Arc B580 DWM Crashes, igd12um64xe2.dll responsible. (BEX64 c0000409 Buffer Overrun)

[slender furnace]

System Information

CPU:  Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 7 265K
GPU:  Intel(R) Arc(TM) B580 Graphics !
MOBO: ASRock B860 Pro-A WiFi
RAM:  32 GB DDR5
OS:   Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

Error Summary

• Crash type: DWM (Desktop Window Manager)
• Faulting module: igd12um64xe2.dll (Intel Arc DX12 driver)
• Exception code: c0000409 (BEX64 / buffer overrun)
• Occurs: Randomly, no triggers; never happens during gameplay.
• Logs: Always trace to igd12um64xe2.dll, dwminit events and application errors tied to dwm.

Steps Taken

Windows

• Ran DISM /RestoreHealth & SFC /scannow (no issues)
• Disabled overlays (Xbox, Discord, Steam)
• Disabled HAGS
• Adjusted TDR delay (led to freeze, necessitated a manual driver restart)
• In-place reinstall of Win11
• Full clean reinstall

GPU Driver & Config

• Used DDU at least ten times for clean installs
• Tested latest & rollback drivers (issue first occurred on 7/29/25)
• Installed drivers standalone (no Arc Control/telemetry, etc)

Display

• Reset monitor to stock settings (disabled High Response, Flicker Free, etc.)
• Tested multiple refresh rates

Hardware & BIOS

• PSU cabling verified (no daisy chain)
• Forced PCIe slot to Gen4
• Tested power from surge protector vs wall (wall slightly more stable, but crashes persist)

Diagnostics

• Memtest86 passed
• Chkdsk passed
• Temps safe (GPU <70 °C, CPU stable)
• Crashes always tied to igd12um64xe2.dll, at times accompanied by LiveKernelEvents 1a8 & 1b8

Outstanding Issue

Despite multiple reinstalls, driver swaps, and hardware checks, crashes continue. Appears to be fully isolated to Intel's Arc DX12 driver (igd12um64xe2.dll).

Any help touching on this would be greatly appreciated, as this has been an issue that's been bugging me for quite some time, and I would hate to consider an RMA.

[cobalt zenith]

@slender furnacedude do u have arc b580

[slender furnace]

yes

[sweet fox]

that's really peculiar, maybe try disabling CFG for dwm? And only so as a temporary fix until Intel pushes a fix

If you don't know how,

Windows Security > App & browser control > Exploit protection settings > Program settings

then, add a program (in this case being dwm.exe, located under C:\Windows\System32)

Editing it, find "Control flow guard (CFG)", check "Override system settings", then turn CFG off entirely, followed by a restart of your computer

[slender furnace]

I'll see if this works, I've been, at most, crash-free for three days until it reoccurs, so I'll get back to you somewhere on the 13th/14th, thank you!

[slender furnace]

Shockingly, this seems to have been the solution. While Windows still seems to report random errors (with COM Surrogate), I haven't experienced a singular DWM crash, and have ultimately seen no corruption. Definitely weird, and this does need a fix, but thank you! Glad I could keep my B580 :)

[sweet fox]

glad to be of assistance!

[slender furnace]

I'm going to go ahead and add that about a couple hours of saying this was solved, I did coincidentally experience another DWM crash. This time, it was a little more on the aggressive side, whereas attempting to view the event through reliability history was made impossible and necessitated a restart—solely for the fact that nothing in the start menu would appear. But, today would've been the eighth day of being DWM-crash-free.

What I went ahead and did was also disable DEP (Data Execution Prevention) for dwm.exe, and now my testing will begin anew. I will be posting updates.

[slender furnace]

Crash has occurred again. Turning off CFG & DEP are not viable solutions, thus prompting me to lean more heavily towards a hardware fault (related to the GPU), at best a problem with the graphics drivers that Intel has yet to see.

[wintry berry]

I see you have disabled Discord Overlay, try also disabling the Discord Hardware Acceleration. I had some issues with playing Warzone and using Discord as comm, the game keeps DirectX error, so after disabling Hardware Acceleration at Discord, it seems fixed.

[slender furnace]

I'll see if this makes any difference, thank you for the suggestion! Though, I should note, I haven't had any issues with gaming on my Arc card—dwm crashing is just about the only issue I'm having, which is the desktop compositor. Though, I do see how it could expose an instability such as this, potentially being a memory leak. I've once even examined Discord with VRAM usage increasing gradually following a DWM crash, so this is likely.

With that, I've went ahead and re-enabled both CFG & DEP and committed a BIOS update. I'll post updates. If it happens again, my last step will be downgrading my driver to 32.0.101.6881.

[slender furnace]

Gonna go ahead and say that this was the solution, albeit strangely so. I could have sworn in the past that I disabled Hardware Acceleration for Discord (to no changes) and felt no need to keep it off. With your solution, though, I've been DWM-crash-free for 11 days now, shattering my previous record by three (and counting). Whether or not this was addressed in the latest Intel graphics driver update is unknown to me, but regardless, I do thank you!

[wintry berry]

I feel any program, that uses hardware for Intel GPU will crash other programs. I also had SteelSeries app for my headphones running in the background makes games run worse, so any graphical or PC components running in the background can reduce Arc performance.

[slender furnace]

I'm actually so tired dude

This has to be hardware failure

[abstract tiger]

bad vram i think

[slender furnace]

I ran a VRAM test with OCCT and it returned no issues 🤷‍♂️ Whether or not that's a method to rule it out, this does seem likely

[slender furnace]

I do have to add, though, I don't fully suspect it's bad VRAM, as if this were the case, I'd expect harder chokes under full load. Stress tests and gaming return perfect results, which leads me to believe that it's a race condition in DX12 compositing where DWM expects sane returns, but Arc’s driver overruns the buffer

[wintry berry]

Check all programs for Hardware Acceleration on them and disable them. I just got a Xsplit Premium Suite streaming app, and it has Hardware Acceleration and it as same as Discord, got error. Had not tried again with HA disabled. It started again this week, when I updated my GPU driver to 32.0.101.8135, so it might reverse the hardware compatibility to older one. Not tried to reverse the update, so I'm not sure.

[wintry berry]

I found a new one: Any browser uses Hardware Acceleration, so check your browser for one. I'll always blame Hardware Acceleration, just like finding a dirt on my screen and have to clean it, before it gets on my nerves. Lol

[slender furnace]

I'll give this a try, it's definitely weird to see ARC misbehave so much with Hardware Acceleration. They seriously need to fix that.

That, and just how awfully their drivers communicate with Windows as a whole; I can't even use TranslucentTB or Wallpaper Engine without stability getting worse. Things like Taskbar.View.Dll crashes happen when configuring the search box/icon, context menus occasionally become unclickable and return to legacy, and a handful of UE4 games like to crash.

[slender furnace]

Unfortunately, not a viable solution. I'm running no apps with hardware acceleration and the problem persisted.

[slender furnace]

MAJOR

I've found a way to reproduce this issue. Right into it, a DWM crash occurs ~1 min after taking a screenshot and editing it, such as drawing. I've also tested that this does NOT occur when the screenshot is taken nor when the screenshot is opened—it ONLY occurs when the screenshot is drawn on. Same logs as before, which leads me to believe that there’s a specific API call or memory pathway (used by Snipping Tool) that fatally interacts with the Arc DX12 driver and DWM.