I know you said that you don’t need the VPN to be active on launch, but maybe try doing it anyway just to be safe.
Did you recently download new software that may interfere with the game?
Can you get more specific details on what is the exact problem that Windows is reporting?
Perhaps this page will help. It lists some of the things that you have already tried, but also some new suggestions:
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/computer-crashes-when-playing-games.html