u/AdagioBubbly5781

Hey everyone,

I’m hitting a wall with a persistent CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT Blue Screen of Death that happens only when playing Forza Horizon 5 on my desktop. The game either crashes right at the end of the loading screen when entering the map or midway through loading the built-in benchmark mode.

System Specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (Running stock, no XMP/OC possible in BIOS)
• Motherboard: Proprietary HP motherboard from a ProTower 285 G8 MT pre-built desktop
• BIOS: Fully updated to the latest version
• RAM: Checked via Windows Memory Diagnostic (Passed, 0 errors)
• Temperatures: Stable under 80°C in-game (Hits 95°C under synthetic stress, but completely fine during normal gaming).

Why this is confusing:
Other heavy multiplayer games like PUBG PC run perfectly smoothly with zero crashes.

Windows Event Viewer Logs Collected:

1. Critical Error: Kernel-Power (Event ID 41) – registers the hard freeze/manual reboot.
2. Error right before crash: Service Control Manager (Event ID 7000) - "The Sentry service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified."
3. Previous Error: DistributedCOM (Event ID 10010) tied to Windows.Gaming.GameBar.PresenceServer.Internal.PresenceWriter.

Everything I have already tried (None have completely fixed it):

• In-Game Settings: Turned Ray Tracing completely OFF, lowered environment geometry, capped frame rates, and switched the game from Fullscreen to Borderless Windowed mode (Borderless allowed the benchmark tool to load further, but it still crashes at the very end).
• Process Optimization: Set Forza 5 process priority to "High" in Task Manager (this made it load slightly longer before crashing). Force-disabled CPU hyper-threading by unchecking odd-numbered threads (CPU core affinity) to keep it on physical cores.
• Driver Clean Up: Did a completely clean GPU driver install using DDU in Safe Mode. Turned off Windows Fast Startup.
• Windows Features: Cleaned out the Windows Prefetch and Temp caches. Ran sc delete Sentry in admin CMD to completely delete the missing service causing the log errors. Attempted to strip Xbox packages via PowerShell and registry, but Windows locks down the component.
• Power Settings: Changed Windows maximum processor state from 100% down to 99%, and eventually to 95% to stop AMD Precision Boost voltage spikes.

It feels like Forza's heavy DX12 multi-threaded asset streaming is causing a massive power or timing desync that this locked HP motherboard VRM cannot handle when transitioning into the 3D world.

Before I go out and buy a new motherboard, standard case, and power supply to rescue my 5600G from this HP office frame, is there any obscure software, driver, or audio conflict I missed that specifically causes Forza 5 to throw Watchdog Timeouts on Ryzen APUs

Hey everyone,

I’m hitting a wall with a persistent CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT Blue Screen of Death that happens only when playing Forza Horizon 5 on my desktop. The game either crashes right at the end of the loading screen when entering the map or midway through loading the built-in benchmark mode.

System Specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (Running stock, no XMP/OC possible in BIOS)
• Motherboard: Proprietary HP motherboard from a ProTower 285 G8 MT pre-built desktop
• BIOS: Fully updated to the latest version
• RAM: Checked via Windows Memory Diagnostic (Passed, 0 errors)
• Temperatures: Stable under 80°C in-game (Hits 95°C under synthetic stress, but completely fine during normal gaming).

Why this is confusing:
Other heavy multiplayer games like PUBG PC run perfectly smoothly with zero crashes.

Windows Event Viewer Logs Collected:

1. Critical Error: Kernel-Power (Event ID 41) – registers the hard freeze/manual reboot.
2. Error right before crash: Service Control Manager (Event ID 7000) - "The Sentry service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified."
3. Previous Error: DistributedCOM (Event ID 10010) tied to Windows.Gaming.GameBar.PresenceServer.Internal.PresenceWriter.

Everything I have already tried (None have completely fixed it):

• In-Game Settings: Turned Ray Tracing completely OFF, lowered environment geometry, capped frame rates, and switched the game from Fullscreen to Borderless Windowed mode (Borderless allowed the benchmark tool to load further, but it still crashes at the very end).
• Process Optimization: Set Forza 5 process priority to "High" in Task Manager (this made it load slightly longer before crashing). Force-disabled CPU hyper-threading by unchecking odd-numbered threads (CPU core affinity) to keep it on physical cores.
• Driver Clean Up: Did a completely clean GPU driver install using DDU in Safe Mode. Turned off Windows Fast Startup.
• Windows Features: Cleaned out the Windows Prefetch and Temp caches. Ran sc delete Sentry in admin CMD to completely delete the missing service causing the log errors. Attempted to strip Xbox packages via PowerShell and registry, but Windows locks down the component.
• Power Settings: Changed Windows maximum processor state from 100% down to 99%, and eventually to 95% to stop AMD Precision Boost voltage spikes.

It feels like Forza's heavy DX12 multi-threaded asset streaming is causing a massive power or timing desync that this locked HP motherboard VRM cannot handle when transitioning into the 3D world.

Before I go out and buy a new motherboard, standard case, and power supply to rescue my 5600G from this HP office frame, is there any obscure software, driver, or audio conflict I missed that specifically causes Forza 5 to throw Watchdog Timeouts on Ryzen APUs