Microsoft Fixes Windows 10 Update That Slowed Game Performance

Like many other PC users last month, as I was about to shut down my system I noticed a familiar blip from Microsoft letting me know it was update time. With as little thought as agreeing to 100,000-word terms of service agreements, I clicked “OK.” Little did I know, updates KB5000842 and KB5001330 would be the source of PC gaming lament for weeks to come.

Microsoft’s two Windows 10 updates led to unintentional issues on Intel, AMD and NVIDIA-powered systems with issues like irregular stuttering in games, bizarre instability with v-sync enabled and odd FPS drops without even having a game launched.

Several experts tied the sudden Windows-exclusive issue to the new updates, most notably Kotaku Australia who said, “It’s such a persistent problem that even Nvidia is formally advising users to roll back the update if they’re noticing problems.”

In a quick Known Issue Rollout (KIR), Microsoft aimed to “quickly revert a single, targeted fix to a previously released behavior if a critical regression is discovered,” as written in their update notes. KIRs can be implemented without a formal Windows update, so fixes to the short lapse in quality are already live in Windows machines.

Frankly, I didn’t notice any major quality dips after the update, but it seems like the update affected people in different ways. Many of the reports came from heavy-hitter games like Forza 7 , but some even reported issues with simple tasks like having two task windows open at the same time.