Microsoft has released an update for Windows 10 causing several problems for users. What’s happening
It’s called KB4515384 the recent Windows 10 update, released by Microsoft to fix the problems caused by the previous optional update KB4512941. The update, however, isn’t supposedly giving the desired results. On the contrary. Instead of solving the problems for which it has been released, it would even worsen the situation.
This is, fortunately, a situation that affects a small number of users. The KB4512941 update caused a malfunction in the SearchUI.exe process, which is necessary for Cortana’s search to work. After the update, some users reported heavy slowdowns. In some cases the search stopped working altogether. Microsoft, upon receiving the complaints, immediately stated that the fix would arrive in a subsequent update of its operating system. Update that, in fact, is KB4515384 with which Microsoft has also fixed some serious security issues in 32-bit versions of Windows 10.
Windows 10 update problem: how are things
Shortly after the release of update KB4515384, which is basically the September 2019 cumulative update, the first complaints appeared on Reddit. In fact, on some configurations, Cortana doesn’t even start and slowdowns have even increased. Other users complain about sound card issues: the volume in some video games is very low or even zeroed out altogether. Yet, on Microsoft’s support page for this update (released on September 10), it still states that “Microsoft is not aware of any issues related to this update”. As a result, it is not known if and when the Redmond company will release a further update to fix the reported problems.
Windows 10 update: how to fix the problems
Deinstalling the September 10 update returns you to the previous situation, i.e. Cortana search works badly and slowly, but it works. However, doing so on the 32-bit version of Windows 10 means you lose the important security patch introduced with the update. In this specific case, perhaps the best thing to do is to fix the problem yourself which should have fixed the faulty fix. Since the anomalies resulting from the previous update were only found on PCs on which Cortana’s web search was disabled, you can try to re-enable it within the registry. To do so, you have to launch the registry editor regedit.it and look for the key “[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSearch]”. Here you have to set “BingSearchEnabled” to value 1 (value 0 disables Web search within Cortana).