New Windows 10 patch is the latest to cause more problems than it solves

New Windows 10 patch
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Windows 10 recently received an update which promises to cure long-standing bugs in the search function, but in a not unfamiliar scenario, this update has broken other bits of the OS and indeed is causing serious crashing issues for some PCs.

To compound the grief, it doesn’t fully resolve all the gremlins which are plaguing Windows 10 search, either – more on that later.

As spotted by Windows Latest, update KB4532695 – which has been deployed for November 2019 Update and May 2019 Update – is causing crashes with a Blue Screen of Death, meaning the PC is totally locked up.

According to a thread on Microsoft’s Answers.com help forum, the patch is also causing a wide variety of nasty issues which include a reported boot failure, disabling audio and the sound card on the PC, and breaking Bluetooth - or internet connectivity in general.

In the latter case, although net connectivity may return after a reboot, it soon flakes out again.

Others are complaining about extremely sluggish boot times, with one user observing: “Installed this in an Intel NUC8i3BEH and encountered very slow boot times. Windows would get stuck at splash or welcome screen for around 5 minutes. I deinstalled this update and reinstalled twice, with the same results. It is now deinstalled.”

Glitches aplenty

A number of other assorted bugbears are described in that thread alone, so it seems that KB4532695 is causing a fair amount of havoc, for some users at any rate. At least it sounds like the really serious problems aren’t affecting that many folks, although that will be scant consolation to those who have been hit hardest.

If you are encountering problems, the best bet is to uninstall the update, as the user above notes.

As we’ve already mentioned, there is further bad news in that as Windows Latest previously highlighted, KB4532695 doesn’t solve all the problems with search in File Explorer.

While it does implement the fixes that Microsoft promised, which resolve issues with right-clicking, and the search bar becoming unresponsive, there are still bugs affecting the bar. These include the user having to left-click twice to get the cursor to appear in the place where they’re clicking inside the search bar – and it’s reportedly necessary to left-click first, before you can right-click on the search bar.

So, by all accounts, glitches are still floating about with the search functionality, and a fresh batch of entirely new problems have been introduced with the Windows 10 update in question.

Maybe the worst thing is that nobody is going to be all that surprised

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).