Windows® 10 users should be aware that the—thankfully, optional—August update is causing major slowdown on many computers.
The update, known as KB4512941, was released to address several issues, including bugs in Windows Sandbox and a black screen issue associated with Remote Desktop connections.
These problems have now been supplanted by a bug within the Cortana service, causing it to hog up to 40% of the CPU. The loss of so much core power is a common cause of sluggishness, latency, crashes and freezes. It also drains battery power much faster.
If you haven’t installed the update, you may wish to skip it. Alternately, iolo’s premier PC optimization product System Mechanic® has several features that may help you gain back some system speed and responsiveness.
In System Mechanic, System Mechanic Pro or System Mechanic Ultimate Defense, within the LiveBoost > Real-Time Boost menu, be sure OptiCore is enabled. This tool prioritizes your processor cores’ attention to the tasks you are actively performing.
PowerSense is another CPU optimization tool; also found in Real-Time Boost, this feature lets you select from a variety of power performance modes to ensure the system’s resources are wisely allocated. For example, High Performance Gaming mode revs your cores to maximum speed, while Batter-saving mode is great for laptops.
Choose On-Demand Boost from within the Live Boost menu to acquire even more speed by temporarily turning off unnecessary background services so your PC focuses its power on a single high-demand task like gaming, streaming, rendering or downloading.
Select Speed Up > Startup Optimizer to prevent unwanted bloatware from automatically launching; this can be a major cause of lag, and many users are not aware of how common it is.
If you’ve already installed the troublesome Windows 10 update, windowslatest.com reports that deleting a specific Registry key may resolve the CPU-usage problem. Another option is to uninstall the update:
- Press Windows+i to open Settings.
- Click Update & security.
- On the Update & security screen, choose View update history.
- Click Uninstall updates.
- Select KB4512941 and click Uninstall.
