Latest Windows 10 Update Cause CPU Spikes, Break Desktop Search

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that some Windows 10 users are having problems with Windows 10 1903. The latest cumulative update released for the OS, KB4512941, can cause CPU usage to surge to 30 percent or even as high as 100 percent. Separately from that, some users are also reporting that Windows Desktop Search is completely broken.

According to Microsoft, the broken search issue only affects systems which have disabled the “Search the web” functionality embedded in desktop search. I admit, this kind of acknowledgment always makes me a bit grumpy, mostly because I've never understood why anyone would want web-search functionality integrated into desktop search in the first place. If I'm searching my desktop, I'm definitionally not searching the World Wide Web. Cluttering my results with data from locations that aren't going to contain what I'm looking for isn't a value-add, it's an active detriment to the entire point of using a desktop search as opposed to a web search.

Separately from these issues, Windows 10 1903 is still grappling with a laundry list of problems. The company still doesn't recommend installing 1903 on Surface Book 2 models with a discrete GPU because the update can break discrete GPU functionality. Some Qualcomm and Realtek device driver versions aren't compatible with the update. Some users with an Intel Audio Driver have reported faster-than-expected battery drain, and the company hasn't fixed an issue causing problems with gamma ramps, color profiles, and night light settings. This one produced some spectacular (and puzzling) visual results while we were testing the 5700 and 5700 XT for AMD's Navi launch back in July.

In most of these cases, Microsoft has “mitigated” the problem by blocking affected products from updating to Windows 10 1903 automatically. The problem with that approach, however, is that it doesn't address the issues of people who updated to 1903 already and didn't discover it was the cause of their issues until the rollback window had already passed. It's easy to remove a single Windows Update, like the cumulative KB4512941 that's causing the new issues with CPU usage, but rolling back the entire 1903 installation is something you have to do within 30 days.

As for the broken desktop search functionality, that's an issue I've actually run into before with earlier Windows 10 updates. When I updated my desktop to Windows 10 1809, it broke desktop search. I rolled the update back as a result, even though I wasn't impacted by the data-deletion bug that affected some users.

Affected users should try uninstalling KB4512941. Users who still can't install 1903 should wait to see if Microsoft will be able to resolve any of these issues before 1909 comes out. Microsoft has made significant changes to how it tests future Windows builds in the Windows Insider program. The result of these changes should be a longer overall test cycle and hopefully updates that will break less code moving forward, but 1903 was released before these changes had gone into effect.

We may not see the impact of these changes until Windows releases its 2020 updates.