Latest Windows 10 updates bring gaming performance improvements and other fixes

Microsoft today released optional cumulative updates to Windows 10 versions 21H1, 20H2, and 2004. These are part of the company’s optional C/D releases for supported versions, meaning these are not automatically downloaded and installed like the usual Patch Tuesday updates. The fixes in these builds will be rolled into the Patch Tuesday release that will happen on the second Tuesday of July.

Today, all three fully supported Windows 10 versions are receiving KB5003690, bumping the build numbers to 19043.1081, 19042.1081, and 19041.1081 for versions 21H1, 20H2, and 2004, respectively. The reason that all three versions are receiving the same patch is that they are built on the same codebase as that of version 2004, with the October 2020 Update and the May 2021 Update being just enablement packages.

As for what’s included in these builds, there are fixes to improve gaming performance issues that users began reporting in April, which the firm acknowledged and released a fix for – essentially rolling back the code that caused the issue using Known Issue Rollback (KIR). Additionally, the update also fixes the problem with the News and Interests widget displaying blurry text – something that was recently added to the list of known issues for Windows 10. Other fixes include addressing sign-in problems when using a pin or a fingerprint for authentication.

Here are the highlights of today’s update:

• Updates an issue in a small subset of users that have lower than expected performance in games after installing KB5000842 or later.
• Updates an issue that causes the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) to suddenly stop working while you are typing.
• Updates an issue in which signing in using a PIN fails. The error message is "Something happened and your PIN isn’t available. Click to set up your PIN again."
• Updates an issue that, in certain cases, takes you out of the exclusive virtual reality (VR) app and back to Windows Mixed Reality Home when you press the Windows button on the controller.
• Updates an issue that causes blurry text on the news and interests button on the Windows taskbar for some screen resolutions.
• Updates an issue with Search box graphics on the Windows taskbar that occurs if you right-click the taskbar and turn off News and interests. This graphics issue is especially visible when using dark mode.
• Updates an issue that might prevent you from using your fingerprint to sign in after startup or waking up your device from sleep.

And here is the complete changelog for the builds:

• Addresses an issue that causes communication between apps to stop working after you enable the “AppMgmt_COM_SearchForCLSID” policy.
• Addresses a performance issue in the MultiByteToWideChar() function that occurs when it is used in a non-English locale.
• Addresses an issue that prevents sorting from working properly when using multiple versions of National Language Support (NLS) sorting.
• Addresses an issue in a small subset of users that have lower than expected performance in games after installing KB5000842 or later.
• Addresses an issue that causes the Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) to suddenly stop working while you are typing.
• Addresses an issue that causes WMIMigrationPlugin.dll to return an error when you attempt to migrate in offline mode.
• Addresses an issue with the Set-RuleOption PowerShell command that fails to provide the option for the Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) policy to treat files signed with an expired certificate as unsigned.
• Addresses an issue that causes Windows to stop working when it uses AppLocker to validate a file that has multiple signatures. The error is 0x3B.
• Addresses an issue that might cause BitLocker to go into recovery mode after updating the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) firmware. This occurs when the "Interactive logon: Machine account lockout Threshold" policy is set and there were incorrect password attempts.
• Addresses an issue that causes Windows to generate many AppLocker or SmartLocker success events.
• Addresses an issue with authenticating for a domain controller when Credential Guard and Remote Credential Guard are enabled.
• Addresses an issue that prevents certain screen reader apps from running when Hypervisor-protected code integrity (HVCI) is enabled.
• Addresses an issue in which signing in using a PIN fails. The error message is "Something happened and your PIN isn’t available. Click to set up your PIN again."
• Adds Windows support for System Management Mode protections (firmware protection version 2.0) for certain processors that support Secure Launch.
• Addresses an issue that, in certain cases, takes you out of the exclusive virtual reality (VR) app and back to Windows Mixed Reality Home when you press the Windows button on the controller. With this update, when you press the Windows button, the Windows Start menu appears. When you close the Start menu, you will go back to the exclusive VR app.
• Improves the accuracy and efficiency of sensitive data analysis in the Microsoft 365 Endpoint data loss prevention (DLP) Classification Engine.
• Addresses an issue with the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) VPN service on remote access server (RAS) servers. Periodically, users cannot connect a VPN to the server over the IKE protocol. This issue might start several hours or days after restarting the server or restarting the IKEEXT service. Some users can connect while many others cannot connect because the service is in DoS Protection mode, which limits incoming connection attempts.
• Addresses an issue that causes Wi-Fi connections to fail because of an invalid Message Integrity Check (MIC) on a four-way handshake if Management Frame Protection (MFP) is enabled.
• Addresses an issue that might cause a VPN to fail after renewing a user auto-enrolled certificate. The error message is "There are no more files".
• Addresses an issue with the Tunnel Extensible Authentication protocol (TEAP) that replaces the outer identity with “anonymous” even though identity privacy is not selected or is disabled.
• Addresses an issue that causes Remote Desktop sessions to stop responding while the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is enabled.
• Adds support for the USB Test and Measurement Class.
• Addresses an issue in Adamsync.exe that affects the syncing of large Active Directory subtrees.
• Addresses an error that occurs when the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) bind cache is full, and the LDAP client library receives a referral.
• Addresses a redirector stop error that is caused by a race condition that occurs when the system deletes binding objects when connections close.
• Addresses an issue that prevents users from setting or querying disk quotas on the C drive.
• Addresses an issue that causes 16-bit apps that run on NT Virtual DOS Machine (NTVDM) to stop working when you open them.
• Addresses an issue that causes fontdrvhost.exe to stop working when Compact Font Format version 2 (CFF2) fonts are installed.
• Addresses an issue that might prevent End User Defined Characters (EUDC) from printing correctly because of font fallback settings.
• Addresses an issue that causes blurry text on the news and interests button on the Windows taskbar for some display configurations.
• Addresses an issue with Search box graphics on the Windows taskbar that occurs if you use the taskbar’s context menu to turn off News and interests. This graphics issue is especially visible when using dark mode.
• Addresses an issue that might cause signing in with your fingerprint to fail after the system starts up or resumes from sleep.

These updates will show up in Windows Update as optional updates, giving users the choice to install them. Those who wish to skip these cumulative patches will be served the fixes along with other improvements as part of the Patch Tuesday update next month. That update will also include fixes for the installation issue for Xbox Game Pass titles.