Windows 10 performance issue fixed

Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 cumulative updates have been causing more problems than they fixed. Thankfully, Windows 10’s July 2021 update has finally addressed critical bugs reported this year.

Microsoft has fixed three Windows 10 issues: Weird audio glitch, broken taskbar icons or system tray buttons and FPS or general performance issues when playing games. These issues were first reported earlier this year and temporary workarounds were offered by Microsoft.

Back in April, users complained about reduced FPS (framerates) and poor performance after installing the KB5001330 update for Windows 10 version 2004 and newer. After the bug was widely reported, Microsoft acknowledged that a small subset of users can experience lower than expected performance in games.

An emergency server-side patch was immediately issued, but it failed to fully patch the performance issues in supported versions of Windows. With Windows 10 July 2021 update (KB5004237), Microsoft has finally addressed the gaming and performance issues that affected a small subset of users.

The issue affected a variety of hardware, with users reporting consistent stuttering in games on devices with Intel, AMD Ryzen processor and Nvidia GeForce graphics cards, while some users said they have been experiencing issues in games on a PC with an integrated Intel GPU.

If you’ve performance issues, you should download and install the July 2021 security update by visiting Windows Update in the Settings app.

Audio issues are now fixed

The update, which first caused game performance issues, also included a high-pitched noise or audio quality issue for some users. Affected platforms include Windows 10 version 21H1, version 20H2 and version 2004.

Microsoft acknowledged the audio issues in May and offered a workaround to users, explaining that the issue does not occur on devices where the stereo is used.

After installing the botched Windows Updates (KB5000842 or newer), devices with Dolby Digital audio may play “a high-pitched noise” or “squeak” sound in certain apps, the company said in its advisory.

Microsoft has finally addressed the patch for everyone with KB5004237 (security update) for version 2004 or newer.

As mentioned, this is a security update and it’s mandatory, so it will be installed automatically. If you don’t have the update installed, you need to open up the Windows Update and then click on ‘Check for updates’ to start the download.

Taskbar issues are now fixed

With July 2021 update, Microsoft has also fixed the annoying News and Interests bug that caused issues with the taskbar and system tray icons as well as the notification center button.

Windows 10 taskbar bug
Blurry and overlapped taskbar icons

The issues reported include the system tray icons disappearing from the taskbar, and glitches where the icons will overlap each other. As mentioned, this also affected Action Center notifications and third-party apps as users couldn’t click on the far right of the taskbar.

None of these taskbar bugs have been officially acknowledged, but you should no experience these taskbar glitches after deploying the July 2021 updates, according to our tests and user reports.

About The Author

Mayank Parmar

Mayank Parmar is Windows Latest's owner, Editor-in-Chief and entrepreneur. Mayank has been in tech journalism for over seven years and has written on various topics, but he is mostly known for his well-researched work on Microsoft's Windows. His articles and research works have been referred to by CNN, Business Insiders, Forbes, Fortune, CBS Interactive, Microsoft and many others over the years.