Spinning cursor every 30 seconds, RDP freezes, File Explorer crashes

The January preview update for Windows 11 24H2 introduced a persistent spinning cursor that appeared every 30 seconds even when the system was completely idle — a metronome of incompetence. Remote Desktop sessions froze entirely, with mouse and keyboard becoming unresponsive. File Explorer crashed and hung. Hyper-V broke during RDP sessions. Audio devices vanished from certain applications. Adobe Premiere Pro’s drag-and-drop broke on multi-monitor setups. Login performance degraded severely. It was less of an update and more of a comprehensive demonstration of how many things can break at once.