Windows 10 Update's Latest Casualties: Action Center, Network Adapters (Update)
Updated, 9/18/19, 7:30 a.m. PT: Microsoft responded to our request for comment with this statement. "Please see the Windows health dashboard for more information. Our goal is to provide everyone with only the best experiences on Windows, and we take all feedback seriously. We are committed to learn from each occurrence and to rigorously apply the lessons to improve both our products and the transparency around our process."
That dashboard has been updated to include another issue affecting the Chinese Simplified (ChsIME.EXE) and Chinese Traditional (ChtIME.EXE) with Changjie/Quick keyboard Input Method Editors (IMEs). The company said these issues might result in the IMEs becoming unresponsive or causing high CPU usage. Other problems with the KB4515384 update, like the ones described below, still haven't been officially acknowledged.
Original article, 9/16/19, 10:22 a.m. PT:
A few more features have reportedly been added to the list of casualties from the KB4515384 cumulative update to Windows 10. Windows Latest said today that it found complaints on social media claiming the update broke Action Center and rendered network adapters inoperable.
The issue with Action Center is simple: some people just can't open it after installing the KB4515384 update.
Problems with network adapters are a bit more complicated. One user said that Windows appeared to create phantom devices and hide their actual networking equipment, which resulted in their system claiming it didn't have an Ethernet connection, even though it did.
These aren't the KB4515384 update's only problems. The release was originally criticized for not actually fixing an issue with Windows Desktop Search that led to high CPU usage. A few days later, people started to complain that the update caused problems with their audio. Now, there are issues with Action Center, network adapters and other aspects of the operating system, like the Taskbar.
Microsoft has been slow to respond to these issues. The company didn't acknowledge the reports about these problems for several days, and when it did, it said a solution wouldn't arrive until late September. None of the most recent reports involving Action Center and network adapters have been acknowledged in the "Known issues" section of the update's page on Microsoft's support website at time of writing.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
We've reached out to Microsoft to learn more and will update this post if the company responds.
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
-
Geef This happened to me and my friend when he brought over his PC to my place to play games! We couldn't figure it out. We assumed the router was screwed up because we weren't able to get a connection on either PC. I never even considered that windows might be the issue. Lesson Learned.Reply -
hotaru251 This is why "forced" updates are bad.Reply
let ppl WILLINGLY update and find the bugs. Stop forcing them on everyone. -
gdmaclew I can't seems to remember Windows 7 having this many problems 4 years after its release.Reply
I've been lucky with my copy of Windows 10 so far but I'm not going to install this update. -
Angelman The network adapter issues aren't exactly new. I've had issues since the 1903 upgrade and have contacted Microsoft on several occasions. My particular issue was related to download speed being capped at about 180 Mbps download on a gigabit service connection. Each time they informed me that it's been a big issue that they've been contacted a lot about and they would have a fix "soon". 4 months later, nothing. I tested on an 1809 hard drive and have no issues on that build. I hope that whatever they put out next resolves all these really stupid issues.Reply -
Colif Win 7 wasn't constantly being upgraded every 6 months like 10 is. You got service packs and patches to fix already inplace features. WIn 10 version updates can change or add new features.Reply
If you only look at bad news, windows 10 looks terrible... but so did all the other ones before it. Its only time that makes the others perfect in your minds. I will take 10 any day over Millenium edition... or even 8. -
shmoochie I'm sorry, but are the autoplaying ads that follow you around the page necessary? I know this isn't related to the article, but it definitely impacted my experience reading it. If I scroll away from something, it means I don't want to look at it anymore. It's not a hard concept.Reply -
InvalidError I'm glad I have the pro version and have deferred upgrades on top of disabling automatic updates in every way I am aware of so that whenever I manually trigger update checks, they should be limited to patches that still haven't been pulled three months after their initial roll-out.Reply -
bit_user Reply
I don't want new features! Not forced on me, at least. Let me decide when I want to upgrade.Colif said:Win 7 wasn't constantly being upgraded every 6 months like 10 is. You got service packs and patches to fix already inplace features. WIn 10 version updates can change or add new features.
I'm calling BS on that. Win 7 has been rock solid for the entire time I've run it (which is since SP1). I don't remember there ever being this kind of news about Win7. Sure, there were a few bad updates, but I think a lot of that happened after MS started trying to push people onto Win10 and took their focus off Win7.Colif said:If you only look at bad news, windows 10 looks terrible... but so did all the other ones before it. Its only time that makes the others perfect in your minds. I will take 10 any day over Millenium edition... or even 8.
I always kept putting off upgrading to Win10 until it became stable, which it never has. That, and the whole thing about MS' utter disregard for users' privacy.
I'm seriously wishing I could completely drop Windows, rather than go to Win 10, but I need it to work from home. I wish ReactOS were further along. It'd be cool if someone like Google had gotten behind that, in a big way.