The WARDOGS update landed, and now your game sits at a black screen or bounces back to desktop before the menu even renders. You’ve already verified file integrity, you’ve restarted Steam, you’ve done the dance. Still nothing. Before you nuke your entire system or rage-post on the forums, there’s a specific sequence of fixes that targets the actual failure points in WARDOGS’ post-update architecture — and most players skip straight past them.
WARDOGS’ anti-cheat and kernel-level processes interact with Windows updates in ways that standard “update your driver” advice completely misses. The game doesn’t crash because your GPU is weak. It crashes because a Windows security patch from August 12th broke the kernel-level input process that WARDOGS’ anti-cheat depends on. That’s the non-obvious root cause, and it explains why fresh installs and driver rollbacks do nothing.
Check the Event Viewer Before You Touch Anything Else
Most players open the Event Viewer and immediately get lost in a wall of warnings. Stop looking at the yellow ones. You need the red exclamation mark, and you need to find it immediately after a crash — not an hour later, not after you’ve already rebooted twice. The red entry will name the exact process that triggered the fault.
In my case, and likely in yours, that process is inputx64.syscodecodecodecodecodecode. It’s a kernel-level input driver that WARDOGS’ anti-cheat loads at startup. When the August Windows security update landed, it changed how kernel-level drivers are validated, and inputx64.syscodecodecodecodecodecode started conflicting with the anti-cheat. The result? Crashes every few seconds — sometimes in the menu, sometimes in the firing range, sometimes just sitting in queue.
Here’s the part that trips people up: the Event Viewer entry will persist even if your PC fully restarts after the crash. So crash, reboot, then check. The red entry will still be there. If you see inputx64.syscodecodecodecodecodecode or any process with a similar kernel-level signature, skip every other fix and go straight to the command line.
Disable the Faulty Process — Don’t Delete It
The Finals had this exact same problem, and the developers recommended deleting the process entirely. That’s aggressive, and it carries risk. If the process is tied to RGB lighting software or another utility you actually use, deleting it can break unrelated functionality. Disabling it is the safer route, and it solves the crash.
Open Command Prompt as administrator. Run these two commands in order:
“`
sc stop inputx64.sys
sc config inputx64.sys start= disabled
“`
The first command stops the process immediately. The second prevents it from auto-starting when your PC boots. Both should return “success” messages. If the second command returns an error, check that you’re actually running as administrator — the command prompt needs elevated privileges to modify service configurations.
Restart your PC. Then run this to confirm the process is actually stopped:
“`
sc query inputx64.sys
“`
You want it to say STOPPEDcodecodecodecodecodecode. If it says RUNNINGcodecodecodecodecodecode, the disable command didn’t take, and you need to rerun both commands. Once it shows STOPPED, launch WARDOGS. In my testing, this took the game from crashing every few seconds to running 24 to 26 hours straight without a single crash. That’s not a marginal improvement — that’s the difference between unplayable and rock solid.
What If the Process Is Different on Your System?
The Event Viewer will tell you the exact name. It might not be inputx64.syscodecodecodecodecodecode — it could be another kernel-level process tied to your specific hardware or software stack. The fix is identical regardless of the name. Stop it, disable it, restart, verify. The only risk is if the process belongs to something you actively need. If it’s an RGB control process, a fan controller, or an input utility, disabling it costs you cosmetic features at worst.
Windows Game Bar Is Killing Your Framerates
Once the crashing is resolved, the next problem is performance. WARDOGS is demanding, and Windows Game Bar runs as an overlay service in the background, consuming system resources that the game needs. Most players never open Game Bar, yet it’s enabled by default and constantly active.
Open Windows Settings, go to Personalization, then Colors, and disable transparency effects. This removes unnecessary animations from the Windows UI, freeing up a small but measurable slice of GPU resources. Then go to Gaming, select Game Bar, and turn it off entirely. This is not a “maybe it helps” fix — Game Bar is a persistent overhead that directly competes with WARDOGS for resources.
While you’re in Gaming settings, check the installed games list and restart your PC after making these changes. The restart is mandatory — Windows needs a clean boot to fully release the resources Game Bar was holding.
Uninstall the Windows Update That Broke Everything
If the Event Viewer fix doesn’t work — or if you’re getting blue screen crashes instead of simple game crashes — the August 12th Windows security update is your prime suspect. Windows Update history will show it. Go to Settings, Windows Update, Update History, and scroll to the uninstall option. Remove the update that was installed right before your problems started.
This is a targeted fix. Uninstall the specific update, restart your PC, and test WARDOGS. If the game launches, you’ve found your culprit. Windows will eventually reinstall the update, but you’ll at least know the source of the conflict — and you can make an informed decision about whether the security patch is worth the crashing.
Reinstall on a Different Drive
The nuclear option, and one that works more often than it should: uninstall WARDOGS completely, then reinstall it on a different drive. If you have a second SSD or an HDD, move the installation there. This fixes corrupted file placement issues that verification tools miss — the files exist and pass integrity checks, but they’re physically located in a way that causes read conflicts.
Right-click WARDOGS in Steam, go to Manage, Uninstall. Then reinstall and select the other drive during installation. This is a time investment, but it’s solved issues for me in the past that no other fix touched.
The Fixes Side by Side
| Fix | Difficulty | Time Required | Success Rate | When to Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disable kernel process via Command Prompt | Intermediate | 10 minutes | Highest (fixes crash loop) | Event Viewer shows inputx64.syscodecodecodecodecodecode or similar |
| Uninstall Windows update | Beginner | 15 minutes | High (fixes blue screens) | Crashes started after an August 12th+ update |
| Clean GPU driver install | Intermediate | 30 minutes | Moderate | All other fixes fail, or you’re running a driver older than September 9th |
| Reinstall on different drive | Beginner | 45 minutes+ | Moderate | File placement issues suspected, all else failed |
| Windows Game Bar + transparency off | Beginner | 5 minutes | Low (performance only) | Game runs but stutters or drops frames |
Update Your GPU Drivers — But Do It Right
NVIDIA released a Game Ready driver specifically for WARDOGS on September 9th. AMD has a comparable driver. If you haven’t updated, that’s step one for performance issues. But the standard “click update” approach isn’t enough — you need a clean installation.
Download the driver from the manufacturer’s website directly. Don’t use GeForce Experience’s express install. Run the installer, select Custom, and check the box for “Perform a clean installation.” This wipes all remnants of the previous driver, including cached shader data that could be corrupted from the update. Restart your PC after the installation completes, then launch WARDOGS.
The Order of Operations That Actually Works
Don’t jump between fixes randomly. The sequence matters. Start with the Event Viewer check — it tells you whether you’re dealing with a kernel-level conflict or something else entirely. If you see the red exclamation mark pointing at a kernel process, go straight to the Command Prompt disable. That’s the highest-probability fix for the crash loop.
If the Event Viewer shows nothing useful, move to the Windows update uninstall. The August 12th security patch has been implicated in crashes across multiple games, not just WARDOGS — The Finals had the same issue, and their developers confirmed the Windows update was the root cause.
Only after those two fail should you touch GPU drivers. A clean driver install can help, but it won’t fix a kernel-level conflict — the game will still crash because the anti-cheat is fighting your input process, not because your GPU is underperforming.
One More Thing Nobody Mentions
If WARDOGS crashes specifically when you’re not actively playing — sitting in queue, staring at the menu, tabbed out — that’s a different failure mode than in-game crashes. Tabbed-out crashes usually point to the game’s rendering loop pausing and the anti-cheat misinterpreting it as a tampering attempt. The kernel process disable fixes this too, because the anti-cheat is no longer actively monitoring the broken input process.
What causes WARDOGS to crash after the latest update?
A Windows security update from August 12th conflicts with the kernel-level input process `inputx64.sys` that WARDOGS’ anti-cheat loads at startup, causing crashes every few seconds.
Should I delete the faulty process or disable it?
Disable it with `sc config inputx64.sys start= disabled` rather than deleting it — disabling preserves the process for any other software that depends on it while preventing it from interfering with WARDOGS.
