Frozen start menu & repeated hardware error

Hi everyone! I've been having two issues for the past few weeks. After a while, (it varies time wise) the start menu and search bar become unresponsive and will no longer open. The only way to make them respond again is to restart; however, this comes with another issue. It will hang forever on the "Restarting..." screen unless I do a hard shutdown.

On the other hand, a hardware error keeps appearing and it appears to talk about an Nvidia driver.

After checking the reliability monitor, it shows that I have two critical faults:






I've tried numerous troubleshooting steps, which I will list below, and none of them have provided any lasting results:

• Disabling Cortana (helped at first, now the issue is back)
• A clean install of the latest Nvidia drivers, twice on two separate days (fixed the hardware error for a day, now it's back)
• sfc /scannow (It shows no integrity violations)
• Installing any and all windows updates (nada)

I even chatted with a support agent at Microsoft and the only thing he could tell me was that "User Accounts are being corrupted and that Microsoft is researching a fix". I'm confused how User Accounts interfere with the start menu and cause a hardware error. This never happened when I was on Windows 8.1, so I am confused as to what has changed (other than the OS version, of course).

Info is attached below; I appreciate any help/advice. Thanks guys! :)