Multiple games "Have Stopped Working"

Right now I have been pretty into 3 games when I have the chance, Total War Rome 2, Payday 2, and Tropico 4. My problem is that both rome and tropico give me frequent "____ has stopped working" and I have the options to close and check online for solutions etc. These errors arent on startup but after playing for seemingly random periods of time, with the exception of pretty much every time I try a multiplayer battle in rome it crashes right after loading the battle.

I am using windows 8.1. I have tried reinstalls for both games, driver reinstall for my gpu, directx reinstall, ccleaner, all to no avail. I'm really hoping to avoid a windows reinstall but may end up doing it unless someone else can give me another option to try.
 

Vynavill

Honorable
Kinda reminds me a lot about what is known as the "Evil Update"...
AFAIK, it's an update which would improve the general performance with various graphic libraries and on IE10, but conflicts with DX10 and whatever else uses particular calls to those libraries. [strike]If I recall correctly, it's also a required update for IE10, so without it it won't work, but I'm not so sure of that right now.[/strike]

Check amongst your Windows' installed updates. If you see an update with a KB2670838 code, uninstall it and reboot.
Had the same issue with DMC4, it would just "stop working" without any reason and after a random time between 2 and 10 minutes; uninstalled that and everything worked again.
The last report of this issue that I've seen regards a W8 laptop as well, although I thought it was limited to W7...

Once you uninstall it and reboot, check again for updates; the KB2670838 will probably be there again, waiting to be installed. You just have to right click it, hide it and install any other update it may require.
[strike]As a side note, if what I recall is actually true, IE10 will stop working correctly. Should you for whatever reason be using it, may I suggest switching to a browser less....obnoxious? :D[/strike]

EDIT: I just checked it back by myself. It's a prerequisite for IE10, and if you choose to install IE10 while not having it, it will install itself.