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KB5067931 and KB5067036 severely impacted Gaming Peformance
Yesterday I installed both of these previews and to my surprise when I went to play a game I've been playing lately. It severely impacted my performance. FPS was reduced substantially. With tons of stuttering and FPS drops. I spent all night troubleshooting until I finally realized I should attempt uninstalling the preview updates as these were the only changes made to the computer in the last day. As soon as I uninstalled them, gaming performance returned back to normal.
I know preview updates are usually rolled out about two weeks prior to official rollout. So, this is definitely something Microsoft should investigate.
3 Replies
Your experience with KB5067931 and KB5067036 causing significant gaming performance issues is concerning, and it's understandable that you'd want to report this for further investigation. Preview updates, by their nature, can sometimes introduce bugs or performance regressions, especially in demanding applications like games.
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, definitely concerning. Now I'm not sure which preview update is the culprit or if it's both. However, I figured I'd report it because I've done numerous updates, including preview updates in the past without issues in games. I'm wondering if this is related to 24H2 or 25H2. Where maybe 23H2 was more stable. This is one of the first times I've had to uninstall update(s).
If you see the story, I posted regarding Task Manager (in this thread), it's possible this was occurring. However, there's no way to be sure as I wasn't paying attention to that specifically when I was troubleshooting the issue.
I can see how bugs sometimes are introduced with preview updates but hoping when official rollout comes around, they fix the problem.
There seems to be a news story about this.
Task Manager Bug in Windows 11 Leads to Performance Loss:
Microsoft has officially identified a bug in Windows 11 that can negatively impact performance in versions 24H2 and 25H2. The issue, which affects Task Manager, prevents the program from closing properly. When users exit Task Manager, its process, taskmgr.exe, sometimes remains running in the background. Over time, multiple instances accumulate, consuming memory and potentially reducing system responsiveness. The problem began appearing after users installed the optional cumulative update KB5067036. This update is not delivered automatically through Windows Update but was downloaded by many users seeking new features, such as Start menu customization, the ability to disable content recommendations, and a redesigned battery icon. Unfortunately, it also introduced an unintended side effect.
According to Microsoft, the issue causes Task Manager to fail to terminate after being closed. The previous instance stays active invisibly, even when the window disappears from view. When the user opens Task Manager again, a new process starts while the old one remains stuck in memory. As more sessions accumulate, the total memory usage can climb significantly.
While each individual Task Manager process uses about 20 MB of RAM, frequent use or long uptime can multiply this number. Dozens of orphaned processes may remain active, eventually degrading performance or stability. Systems that remain powered on for long periods or that frequently monitor system activity are most affected.
Although the bug does not pose a risk of data loss or crashes, it can cause noticeable slowdowns, especially on machines with limited RAM. Users may also see reduced performance in multitasking scenarios, as memory resources are tied up by redundant Task Manager instances.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issue publicly and confirmed that a fix is under development. The company has not specified an exact release date but stated that an update will be issued “in the coming days.”
In the meantime, affected users can mitigate the problem by manually closing all taskmgr.exe processes. This can be done either through Task Manager itself—by ending each duplicate entry—or by running the taskkill /F /IM taskmgr.exe command in Windows Terminal or Command Prompt. After all instances are closed, Task Manager will behave normally until the issue reappears.
Source: https://www.guru3d.com/story/task-manager-bug-in-windows-11-leads-to-performance-loss/
