I've tried almost everything
I just wanted to reply to your post as well. I've been using VLC for many years, on many different systems and I always loved it because it was absolutely rock solid on everything.
Alas, over the last 6+ months of updates VLC has been less than rock solid on at least 4 different systems I'm using it on. Crashes and lock ups have really annoyed us, esp with HEVC content (yes hardware and driver supported), like you I've tried all sorts of things uninstalls and re-installs, drivers, tweaks, OS re-installs, etc. Nothing has made it run reliably like it used to..
Then it dawned on me, why am I persisting with these versions? I uninstalled it completely, reinstalled a fresh 2.2.5.1 Umbrella and its not run this nicely for a very very long time. At this stage I'm going to stick with 2.2.5.1 on all my systems and hopefully things will be stable again.
I'm not sure whats going on, but I have to say my love of VLC is starting to wane as its being a right PITA not on just 1 system but several. Is it hardware, drivers, Win10? I don't know but what I do know is that it looks like VLC is going down the path of sucking from the absolute KING of video players which is a real shame.