Windows 10 gets a fix for bug that caused stuttering (or worse) in games

PC gaming
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A recent Windows 10 update has been under the spotlight for causing serious issues for some PC gamers, but the good news is that Microsoft hasn’t just acknowledged this issue – it has rolled out a fix.

The problems, which included stuttering and nasty frame rate drops in games, as well as outright crashes, were linked to the KB5001330 update, and the previous KB5000842 preview update, with even an Nvidia forum admin coming forward to recommend that folks should try removing these updates to cure the bugbears.

It wasn’t clear how many people were affected, but Microsoft reckons the issues weren’t widespread. Even so, any Windows 10 users suffering at the hands of these glitches were obviously seriously frustrated.

In a Windows 10 status update, Microsoft acknowledged this gremlin as a known issue, noting that: “Some users have reported lower game performance in full screen or borderless windowed mode when using multiple monitors.”

Elsewhere, the software giant clarified that it was a “small subset of users” experiencing worse performance in games following the KB5001330 patch being applied, and that ‘most’ users affected (but not all) were using two (or more) monitors.

The problem was marked as resolved on April 23, and as Windows Latest spotted, Microsoft has deployed a server-side fix. In other words, this isn’t an update delivered to Windows 10 PCs as such, and you won’t see a patch to apply under Windows Update.

Rather, the code in KB5001330 causing these problems will be remotely disabled. This process will happen automatically, or you can try to force the code disabling measure by checking for updates in Windows Update, and then restarting your PC (note that you won’t see a formal update or patch to download, as just mentioned).

Rolling out

Microsoft tells us: “Please note that it might take up to 24 hours for the resolution to propagate automatically to consumer devices and non-managed business devices. Restarting your device might help the resolution apply to your device faster.”

This should hopefully be an end to the stuttering saga, then, and early reports we’ve seen on the likes of complaint threads about the bug seem to indicate that the fix does work. One gamer on Reddit said: “This update seems to fix performance in games … I tested in DS3 [Dark Souls 3] and now it’s working fine.”

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).