AoE3:DE Freeze on Windows 11 — cursor snaps to top-left (0,0), sometimes black screen; Ryzen 7 8840U + AMD eGPU

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Game: Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (Steam)
OS: Windows 11
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 8840U (8C/16T)
GPU: Radeon 780M iGPU + AMD RX 9060 eGPU → external monitor via DP (2560×1440)

What happens

Game runs perfectly smooth… until it doesn’t. At some point the mouse cursor snaps to the top-left corner (0,0). Right after that the game freezes and audio stutters until it stops completely. To reset after the freeze, I have to unplug the eGPU and reopen AoE III DE. One time it also auto-changed resolution to 1200×800 after the crash.

How often / timing

Anywhere from: 5–10 min until freeze. After tons of changes, it improved to ~15 min and even ~25min. Still reproducible; the freeze is always preceded by the cursor snapping.

What I tried (high-level)

Drivers

Reinstalled drivers directly from AMD. Made the device management more stable.

In-game / Steam

  • -dx11

  • windowed / borderless / fullscreen

  • lowered graphics, AA off, Vsync off

Windows / overlays

  • disabled Xbox Game Bar + Game Mode + background captures

  • disabled overlays (Steam + AMD)

  • DPI override + disable fullscreen optimizations

  • forced eGPU use with priority and high performance

CPU scheduling

  • Process Lasso CPU affinity + priority Normal (multiple affinity sets tested)

Windows 11 display pipeline

  • Disabled MPO via registry:

    • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm

    • OverlayTestMode (DWORD) = 5

  • Disabled HAGS

  • Increased TDR timeouts (TdrDelay/TdrDdiDelay)

Mouse/input

  • disabled pointer trails + enhance pointer precision

  • lowered polling rate

Result

It does get more stable (went from freezing in ~5–10 min to ~20–25 min), but eventually the same trigger happens: cursor snaps to top-left → freeze/black screen.

Next step

I’m considering a Windows 10 22H2 dedicated install only for AoE3DE (dual-boot or external SSD) because Windows 11 still triggers this issue after extensive mitigation.

If anyone has a proven fix for the cursor-to-top-left + freeze/black screen behavior, please share.

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Hi! I had a similar problem to yours months ago, but it happened in other games or even when opening the internet. Anyway, I tried everything, updating video drivers, motherboard drivers, I even called a computer technician, who did a scan and nothing! I was getting desperate, thinking it was my video card that was defective! Until one day, I opened the case, disconnected the video card, memory, did a superficial cleaning and reconnected the parts, it’s been more than 5 months since the black screen and background noise problem has occurred again. I believe that, for some reason, the parts were not properly fitted. Maybe this can help you.

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