Windows 10 has been mired in more update misery, it would seem, with its latest (fortunately optional) cumulative update causing further problems – and indeed even more serious issues – than we recently reported on.
We’re talking about Windows 10 KB4541335, which as mentioned is an optional update aiming to cure bugs with the Windows 10 November 2019 Update and May 2019 Update, except it’s causing problems as well as fixing them (and not for the first time, by a long shot, for Microsoft’s updates in recent history).
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As we initially observed, some of the problems users have encountered include their PC crashing, and slow performance (with the system suffering from high CPU usage, and generally bogging down). We’ve previously seen complaints about games suffering from ‘terrible input lag’ after applying this update, too.
While it’s not clear exactly how many users may be negatively impacted by this cumulative update, Windows Latest has highlighted further alleged gremlins in the works with KB4541335, probably because more and more folks are installing this as time goes on.
Certainly there were more reports of trouble which emerged online over the weekend, including one particularly nasty sounding case where the user said their PC was actually bricked by the cumulative update.
They complained: “My machine bricked all night and I had to unplug and roll back. Finally, after about 30 minutes it uninstalled and I could go to Settings and pause updates for a month. This is happening way too often.”
Another user then chimed in complaining that their computer had been slowed up by the update, which as mentioned is seemingly one of the more common issues that folks are reporting.
As Windows Latest further notes, reports are still coming in of system sluggishness, high CPU, memory and disk usage, and indeed general stability problems with Windows 10 following the installation of the optional update.
Also on Microsoft’s Answers.com help forum, there are further complaints, including one laptop owner who claims to have hit another serious error, namely that: “On the last 2 occasions I installed the optional KB4541335, upon reboot, the machine reported NO Operating system could be found.”
We’ve also previously seen that with this update, some folks are unable to install it, getting an error message instead. Although they might just be the lucky ones, of course…
No update on the update
Microsoft is reportedly holding the line that it isn’t aware of any issues with KB4541335.
Even so, given the apparent flow of complaints about the update, and the fact that it’s optional anyway, it would seem like the best course of action for now is just to leave this one aside for the time being. It’s optional, after all, and unless you’re really desperate for the bug fixes that it applies, steering clear looks to be the safest course of action.
The fixes provided by the optional update are hardly critical, anyway. For example, it resolves a bug with Microsoft’s Your Phone app on certain devices where the mute button fails to function, and a problem where some applications can’t be closed in some cases is cured (although the latter does sound a little frustrating).
If you have installed KB4541335 and are experiencing issues, perhaps the best thing to do at this point is to simply remove the update.
As we previously detailed, it’s pretty easy to do that. Simply open the Settings app (the cog icon in the Start menu) click 'Update & security' and then click on 'Windows Update' in the left-hand menu, then 'View update history'. Click 'Uninstall updates', find KB4541335 in the list of updates, select it, then click to uninstall.
Meanwhile, we’ll just have to hang on as Microsoft hopefully does some further investigating to get to the bottom of what might be going on here.
