Windows 11 update is reportedly causing some PCs to crash or run very sluggishly
March cumulative update is bad news for some users, going by reports
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Windows 11’s cumulative update for this month is causing serious problems in some reported cases.
This is KB5035853 forWindows 11 23H2and 22H2 which started rolling out earlier this week carrying some useful new features. That includes being able to use theSnipping Tool to edit photos from your Android smartphonedirectly on your PC, plus adding support formuch faster (80Gbps) wired connectivity with USB4 v2.0.
However, some Windows 11 users have hit major snags when installing the March update, withWindows Latesthighlighting these, and the site experiencing a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) itself after running the update process.
The tech site’s BSoD arrived with an error saying ‘Thread Stuck in Device Driver’ which isn’t very helpful, and others have been hit by this problem, such as a reader running a bunch ofLenovodevices (in a business setting).
Furthermore, there’s evidence of this nasty crash on theReddit threadintroducing KB5035853. One user tells us: “This update caused a Windows to crash on startup. Got blue screen error. Had to rollback. Just a warning. That happen to anyone else?”
Someone chimes in to say they were affected too (and got put in a boot loop, with repeated reboots, before ending up at that BSoD).
There are other reports on this thread noting that the update did install, but then caused ‘random’ BSoDs afterwards.
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On top of this, there are also folks who are complaining about Windows 11 running sluggishly, with theirPCstuttering after the update, or even freezing up periodically.
Analysis: Fixing with one hand, breaking with the other?
These are really unpleasant side-effects here, and the cure so far seems to be simply rolling back the installation (removing KB5035853, or using System Restore to rewind time back to before the update was triggered).
On Reddit, there is a mention of aYouTubevideo that offers potential solutions, and we’ve had a look – there are a couple of clips, in fact – but we’d take the advice imparted with a hefty pinch of salt. Some folks in the YouTube comments have reported seeing success, and others have said the fixes outlined have failed. But for now, rather than trying what seems like shots in the dark as attempted cures, if you’re affected, we’d probably just go for reverting the update and waiting forMicrosoftto investigate these glitches.
(It’s worth noting that in the YouTube comments there are also further complaints of PCs seriously chugging with slowdown post-update).
At the moment,Microsoft’s support documentfor the March cumulative update indicates there are no known issues.
The irony here is that this March update addresses a problem with the February update for Windows 11 whereby it failed to install (and got stuck at 96% complete with an error code and a helpful message saying that ‘something did not go as planned’). So, the patch curing that problem with the previous patch failing to install, also fails to install in a different, and in fact worse, way.
Hopefully Microsoft is on the case with this one as we type this. It’s difficult to say how widespread the BSoD problem is, but there are certainly enough reports of post-installation performance blues to suggest that something has gone awry with KB5035853.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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