Windows 11’s latest cumulative update has been triggering a whole heap of problems going by a bunch of online reports, including causing havoc for PC gamers in some cases.
This is KB5030219, the compulsory update for September that was released last week and piped to Windows 11 22H2 systems.
Windows Latest spotted a catalog of reported gremlins in the works with KB5030219, and that includes the update causing Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) crashes.
On top of that, readers have reported instances of system slowdown to Windows Latest following the installation of KB5030219, and network connection problems, with internet access apparently failing for some post-installation.
There are also reports of PCs failing to start entirely after the update, which is very worrying of course – there’s nothing worse than your system failing to boot after applying an ‘upgrade.’
Another report on Reddit, on the official thread introducing KB5030219, complains about a problem where the Start menu (and search functionality) fails to work for some folks.
That Reddit thread contains quite a number of other issues, including various performance problems (like a very slow right-click menu) and tabs in File Explorer disappearing due to KB5030219, as well as some weird audio glitches. Oh, and installation failures, with the update failing to complete in some cases (a continued problem with Windows 11 cumulative updates for some folks).
And on top of that, as mentioned, PC gamers have been hit here. Windows Latest highlights some apparent performance glitches with Starfield, and a post on Microsoft’s own Feedback Hub claims the Game Pass version of Starfield is experiencing TDR (timeout detection and recovery) errors and crashes.
“After removing the update, the Starfield game ran normally,” the affected gamer observes.
However, Windows Latest further notes that it’s not sure if these Starfield performance issues could be related to Nvidia’s most recent GeForce driver, or to this Windows 11 cumulative update.
One Redditor certainly lays the blame at Microsoft’s door, saying: “It’s definitely a Windows update issue for me because I didn’t update my GeForce driver (I use the studio driver that is still at v536.99) but stupid me did the Windows update and now my PC is exhibiting all kinds of intermittent internet connection problems, lags, slow application startups, etc.”
Another Redditor claims: “Yes! I thought it was the new Nvidia driver I had installed at first, but then rolled it back and [the] issue [performance problem in Starfield] was still present. I then uninstalled update KB5030219 and issue was completely gone. Reinstalled the latest Nvidia driver again and it was fine. Not sure what they broke with that Windows update, but I won’t be reinstalling it until it has been addressed.”
Other reports from PC gamers include Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart misfiring with crashes and freezes.
Analysis: Return of the timeouts (sadly)
This is a surprisingly lengthy laundry list of serious issues across the board, really. We expect some rockiness to be experienced with any new patch, true, but this kind of level of apparent chaos is a poor show from Microsoft. The range of the glitches, and the performance hits in many cases – for gaming, and operation within the Windows 11 environment in general – make for a truly worrying state of affairs.
What doesn’t help is there’s no admission from Microsoft that there’s anything amiss here, at least not yet. In the supporting bumph for KB5030219, Microsoft simply states that it is “not currently aware of any issues with this update” and leaves it at that.
What’s extra disappointing for us here is that TDR errors were resolved in July, with the cumulative update for that month – so to see them apparently making a return already is a bit of a blow, to say the least.
Hopefully, Microsoft will be investigating the many outlined issues here, because clearly, something has gone awry with KB5030219 – to see this much disgruntled chatter around an update, and such a wide-ranging set of apparent problems, is definitely concerning.
