Critical system freeze when running Apex Legends

Apex Legends causes a full system to freeze approximately 5–15 seconds after entering the lobby. The entire operating system becomes unresponsive (no input, no Task Manager, no BSOD). Only a forced power shutdown recovers the system.

Frequency: 100% reproducible

When it happens:
– After shaders finish loading
– While idle in lobby (no matchmaking required)

What does NOT help:
– Clean reinstall (EA App and Steam)
– GPU driver clean install (DDU)
– Easy Anti-Cheat repair/reinstall
– Windows power/performance changes
– Windows Memory Diagnostic (RAM check) – no errors found
– Disk error scan (chkdsk) – no bad sectors or file system issues

Important:
Other demanding games (Battlefield 2042, Assassin’s Creed Mirage) and professional applications (Adobe Illustrator, Figma) run without any issue. This indicates a game-specific or Easy Anti-Cheat kernel-level issue.

System:
– Windows 11
– ASUS gaming laptop
– NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU + Intel Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics iGPU (hybrid graphics)
– 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11370H @ 3.30GHz (3.30 GHz)

Impact:
Prevents gameplay entirely and risks hardware due to repeated forced shutdowns.

Note:
I have been playing Apex Legends for several years on the same device without any issues. This problem started recently and is the first time the game has become completely unplayable.