I've been able to play 1.17.1 and previous versions for a very long while with no issues. Suddenly, I find myself incapable of loading worlds in singleplayer or connecting to multiplayer despite several reinstalls of the game and of java. This has happened on 1.16.5-1.17.1 so far.

Whenever I force quit the game after it gets stuck on 100% in the loading screen, I get this error:

19:30:42.864
AL lib: (EE) ALCwasapiPlayback_resetProxy: Audio client returned buffer_len < period*2; expect break up <log4j:Event logger="ddv" timestamp="1634603442864" level="INFO" thread="Render thread"> <log4j:Message><![CDATA[OpenAL initialized.]]></log4j:Message> </log4j:Event>
19:30:42.864
XML_ERROR_PARSING_ELEMENT