Audio music files crash Windows (1607), even after clean install

I'm at a loss. With 1511, everything was fine. Since going to 1607 a couple of months ago, things have gone haywire, as documented in other threads.* Among the biggest problems has been that music files played via players (not online streaming) invariably crash during the first song, the second song or occasionally down the line and take the OS with it (foobar, Zoom Player, others - not watching videos with ZP though). That was with a USB connection to a dac with its own USB driver. That and repeated file manager and Start/Restart hangs with 1607 finally led me to do a clean install last night.

Everything was going great until I installed Zoom Player and the dac's USB driver. First song stops halfway through and Zoom Player locks up, won't close. With that, the hanging Restarts and Startups commence again, even after I uninstalled both the driver and ZP and add ons. So I tried again today, this time with no USB, just Zoom Player and earphones. Right off, after reinstalling Zoom Player and presumably when it crashed, all the taskbar buttons went nonfunctional, blank (white). And again, the music stops after several songs, and shows "Loading" indefinitely. With that, the taskbar buttons go nonfunctional again - "can't open this item" - although this time they are not blank. Had to manually shut down via the case. Upon reboot, I try VLC. It hangs too, three seconds into the first file. Same deal: VLC won't close and have to manually shut down.

So I'm at a loss (Give me back 1511!) At first, I was wondering if the one or more of the programs Zoom Player adds during set up, specifically ffdshow, MadVR and Haali Media Splitter, might be in conflict with 1607, although they are well respected and I'm not aware of anyone else having problems with them (if there were, it's the kind of thing that would have been taken care of by now). But ZP and VLC are not alone in this, so there's got to be something more basic going on. Beyond saying that, I'm stuck and need to ask for help figuring this out. Any ideas? Thanks,

*Update from 1511 to 1607 failing
Desktop icons not responding on first click, opening other icons


Win 10 Pro x64, i7-4790K, ASRock Extreme6 (bios current), 32gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 950 SC card, JPlay USB card (unplugged currently).

Are your music files on the same drive as your OS? The only thing I can think of is maybe your music files somehow got corrupted during the Windows update.

@theveterans, read my post again, in particular the second paragraph from "So I tried again..." In any case, the PS Audio dac's USB driver is being used by others using the latest Win 10.

@ArazelEternal, No, the music files are on another SSD. And it's been a variety of music files, mp3 and flac mainly. Starting from the simplest explanation, the common ingredients are the Anniversary edition and a BIOS update right before I did it. I'll see if I can roll back the latter. That aside, I haven't found anyone else reporting a similar problem yet.

To be clear, the music players crashing provoke, Restarting/Startup hangs, etc., but those hangs have a life of their own, independent of music playing (or USB even being hooked up).