Microsoft Rolls Back Windows 10 Change That Caused Audio Glitches

Microsoft said it is rolling back a change released in a Windows 10 update last week that caused audio problems for gamers.

The issue is an embarrassment for Microsoft, which has been forced to acknowledge problems in several of its recent Windows 10 patches.

The KB4515384 update, released on 10 September, was itself intended to fix a bug that caused spiking CPU usage by the SearchUI.exe process for some users.

But reports said the fix caused other issues with Windows 10 search, the Start Menu, Action Centre and USB connections.

Buggy update

Microsoft has now acknowledged that the fix caused audio issues for many users.

The fix implemented a compatibility change that enabled certain games to query support and render multi-channel audio, Microsoft said.

But “some games and some devices” did not render multi-channel audio as expected, the company said.

Users reported muffled sound in popular games such as PUBG.

“Due to customer feedback, we are reverting this change as some games and some devices are not rendering multi-channel audio as expected,” Microsoft said.

The company also released workarounds for the issue on the KB4515384 release page.

It said a fix is expected in late September.

Network issues

Microsoft also acknowledged that the latest version of Windows 10, version 1903, disables network connections for certain NEC devices.

Microsoft and NEC found that compatibility problems occur “with Intel Centrino 6205/6235 and Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi cards when running Windows 10 version 1903 on specific models of NEC devices”, the company said.

As a result, Microsoft has blocked the affected NEC products from updating to Windows 10 version 1903 until the problem has been fixed.

Microsoft has been criticised for forcing Windows 10 users to upgrade to the most recent version of the operating system, whether bugs are present or not.

In June Microsoft introduced a new policy that allows users to manually delay updates from occurring for up to 35 days.

Forced upgrades

However, when Windows 10 versions reach their end-of-support dates after 18 months, users are no longer able to block or delay updates.

For instance, in mid-July Microsoft began pushing out Windows 10 version 1903 to users of the April 2018 Update.

The April 2018 version is set to reach its end-of support date on 12 November, 2019, after which users will be forcibly updated to version 1903.