DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION in Windows 11? Disable CPU C-States

Hey everybody, quick update here. I just wanted to yell into the internet about disabling CPU C-States in your BIOS if you're getting the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION (0x133) error in Windows 11. It completely fixed the issue for me, and it might fix it for you too.

I first started running into this issue about two years ago. Every single day I'd wake up, turn my PC on, and play the game of "how long until I actually boot into Windows?" Sometimes it would be a couple minutes, sometimes a couple hours. Turn the PC on, wait for a blue screen, turn it off, repeat. Literally for hours some days; no exaggeration.

I couldn't take it anymore. It got to the point where I ended up building an entirely new PC last year. That old one then sat in a closet for the past year, waiting to be "upgraded" into my son's new PC. Well, we finally got around to it this past week, and the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION was back. To be fair, it didn't rear its ugly head again right away, but it came back.

The first problem we ran into was constant freezing while trying to install a fresh copy of Windows 11. It would take forever, but eventually boot into the installer. Sometimes it would freeze completely on the very first screen, or maybe I'd make it a couple screens in. But without fail, it would always either freeze up or restart itself.

My original thought was that it was the RAM; though I really hoped not, especially with today's prices. I ran MemTest86 and everything passed. Then I thought maybe the SSD was dying, even though it had been working fine in my son's other PC the day before. I tried a few different SSDs of my own. Same results. Freezing. I tried pulling all but one stick of RAM, swapping sticks around, removing the GPU, reseating a bunch of components, multiple different installation USB drives, and basically everything else I could think of.

After many hours on the internet, and days of trial and error, I found one random suggestion: disable CPU C-States. Just go into your BIOS, dig through it, especially around the CPU-related settings, and disable anything related to C-States. That fixed it for me.

The PC instantly felt way snappier than it did before. It had actually felt kind of sluggish even on the Windows 11 install screen, and once I disabled C-States, that was gone too. No more freezing. I could tell almost immediately that this was the fix. I'm literally sitting here typing this up right now while Windows 11 installs, and I'm that confident this was the thing we were looking for.

Dozens of hours spent over the years trying to find a fix, only for it to end up being one simple BIOS setting. I don't remember ever seeing this suggestion back when I used this PC as my main one, otherwise I absolutely would've tried it. Hopefully you find this blog and it saves you hours of your own time too. Good luck.