KB5001330 Windows Update is reportedly causing performance drop in games, failed installs and bootloops

Ashwin
Apr 15, 2021
Windows, Windows 10
|
39

Microsoft released the KB5001330 Windows Update this Tuesday, which brought many security fixes. Unfortunately it also seems to have introduced some issues, at least on some devices.

KB5001330 Windows Update is reportedly causing performance drop in games, failed installs and bootloops
A handful of users on reddit have reported that the latest update causes performance drops in games. The troubles first surfaced in KB5000842, and has since reemerged in the latest patch. Well, you may say that Microsoft hasn't fixed it yet.

The primary issue appears to be frame drops in games, and this appears to be related to the VSync setting. Other issues reported by users include lag spikes, i.e., a sudden massive slowdown or stutter that happens for a few seconds.

I'm familiar with the problem that the users are reporting, as I experienced a similar issue on this computer last year (especially in Rise of the Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed Origins). The lags were caused by the Nvidia 451.67 game ready driver, and this was delivered through Windows Update. I had to revert to an older video driver to fix the annoyances, so you could try a similar solution if you have such lags.

I wanted to check if I experience similar issues with the latest patch,  so I tested the KB5001330 update with my GTX 1650, and had no such troubles. Based on the comments from users, it is possible that the issue only affects newer GPUs like the NVidia 2000, 3000 and AMD R5 series. The thread also suggests an easy fix for the issue, you just have to uninstall the update. You can do so from the Settings > Update & Security > View Update History page.

So, if you're a gamer and are experiencing poor performance, low frame rates in games that used to run flawlessly until a few days ago, it is likely that the KB5001330 Windows Update could be the culprit. Once you have gotten rid of it, your games should work as normal.

Digging deeper, I noticed that this wasn't the only issue reported by users. Members at the Microsoft Community forums have stated that they have encountered issues with the KB5001330 Windows Update failing to install. The error code for this is 0x800f0984. Some groups say they got a different error, with the code 0x800f081f. This specific issue is related to Windows Update being unable to fetch the patch from Microsoft's servers.

If Windows Update says that it cannot download the patches, the solution that has been recommended by a Microsoft moderator is to reset WSUS (Windows Update Service and Agent). Some users say they encountered a problem that is more serious, as they were greeted by bootloops with the stop code 0xc000021a after installing the update. A couple of others seem to have experienced screen flickering that happens when resizing Chrome or Edge windows.

Reference links: 1, 2

If you haven't updated to KB5001330 yet, and want to avoid this particular patch, you can pause Windows Updates for a week or two. I usually create a restore point before installing major updates just to be on the safer side, maybe that is something that you could find helpful.

Have you experienced problems with the KB5001330 update? Share your experience and fixes with other users.

Summary
KB5001330 Windows Update is reportedly causing performance drop in games, failed installs and bootloops
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KB5001330 Windows Update is reportedly causing performance drop in games, failed installs and bootloops
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KB5001330 Windows Update is reportedly causing performance drop in games, failed installs and bootloops. Many users have fixed the problem by uninstalling the update.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Kerim said on May 5, 2021 at 9:44 pm
    Reply

    My computer starts are so slow… It takes 5 minutes to boot up. I am unistalling it. New upgrading to 10 is bad idea, have to revert to 8.1

  2. Christian Heine said on April 19, 2021 at 1:23 am
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    I experienced issues with MS Office on multiscreen” laggy scrolling, window moving etc. HW acceleration is completely buggy with this update, so productivity is massively reduced! I even returned two! notebooks as I thought they had broken gpu, as the problem a few hours after I received them. They had other issues as well so a RMA was in place nonetheless, but I completely blamed Asus with their Rozen notebook lineup, before noticing that is was this update causing strange issues with hw accelerated apps. I even posted the issue in MS Support Forum, but they were none the wiser. What a waste of my time.

  3. Aeon said on April 19, 2021 at 12:41 am
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    No problems here as usual. Wonder how come I’m never one of those affected by all these supposedly botched updates. Then again, I don’t go about using stupid tweaks and apps to interfere with the OS and prevent its proper functioning. Some users may be genuinely unfortunate and hit by a buggy update, but the vast majority IMO are not-so-smart Alecs who have already borked their systems internally based on half-baked knowledge and lies gleaned from fear-mongers on idiotic sites, which naturally causes updates to choke and fail.

    1. Peterc said on April 20, 2021 at 6:30 am
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      @Aeon: Enhh. I’ve applied a *lot* of privacy tweaks to my Windows 10 Home laptops and have Sordum’s Windows Update Blocker enabled *except* when I decide it’s time to update, and I seem to have been lucky so far, too. On the other hand, I don’t have a discrete GPU (and hence no GPU drivers) and I’m not a gamer, and maybe that increases my odds. (I *still* image my system drive with Macrium Reflect before updating, though. I’m not *that* trusting.) But seriously, based on own experience in Windows 7 and what I’ve read about Window 8/8.1 and Windows 10, the reliability of Microsoft’s updates has gone *way* down since they fired most of their in-house beta-testers. Until around spring of 2015, I used to be able to install pretty much any update Microsoft proposed as a matter of course. Since then, it’s been important (sometimes critical) to vet proposed updates online before even *thinking* about installing them. I’m not a professional sysadmin working with a large number of computers, and I’ve personally had a Windows 7 laptop fan burned out by a rogue Microsoft compatibility update, seen a friend’s Windows 7 computer rendered unbootable *twice* by bad Microsoft updates, and seen my Dad’s Windows 7 rendered unbootable by a bad feature upgrade. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that Microsoft updates have become less reliable than *Fedora* updates since 2015 — and Fedora is a quasi-experimental, cutting-edge distro. I think the most we can fairly agree on is that we, and maybe most but not all Windows 10 users, are just *lucky*.

      1. Aeon said on April 22, 2021 at 1:37 pm
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        If being ‘lucky’ means not messing with the internals of the OS and not doing/running unsupported crappy tweaks and tweaking software in general, then yeah I plan to continue being this lucky. Saves me from stress over having to manually monitor every single update and having to cry and complain every time one of them breaks something because of prior stupid hacks.

  4. Anonymous said on April 18, 2021 at 10:46 pm
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    The only reason I keep a Windows partition is so that I can test how EdgeHTML renders things. This update removed the legacy Edge, so I had to uninstall it just to recover EdgeHTML.

  5. TTurgeon said on April 18, 2021 at 8:26 pm
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    Ran into Windows search not working errors. Thought that maybe I had messed something up when I disabled indexing for searches. Tried a bunch of unsuccessful remedies to try to get the search function back. Windows trouble shooter could not solve the problem either. Finally, I checked to see when the last automatic update took place. I uninstalled the last update which was KB5001330 and now everything works again.

  6. AAA said on April 18, 2021 at 6:19 am
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    It’s not a new thing. We all know how Microsoft has cut down the process of testing the updates and patches before releasing it to public. Saving cost and making the early adopters the guinea pig to do the testing, and then fix major issues and make it available for mass adoption. Funny thing is, the dust system starts behaving oddly once you pause the updates. At least mine does. ☻
    I have been experiencing lag on Street Fighter V with Xbox Controller. 😒 But, I did rank up. 😂

  7. Yuliya said on April 17, 2021 at 11:41 pm
    Reply

    Running April updates on both LTSC 1809 and a Pro WS 20h2, they both perform on par. The same performance in Horizon Zero Dawn (GoG), the only difference being benchmark-to-benchmark variation.

  8. Anonymous said on April 17, 2021 at 10:24 am
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    certain apps and .exe files wont load and just auto shutdown for me. games wont boot, nothing.. browsers work tho. and some other apps but it autocloses the majority of them

  9. Anonymous said on April 16, 2021 at 10:20 pm
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    Why does the settings app look so ugly still? Looks like a web page some intern made on their free time.

  10. Jim said on April 16, 2021 at 9:20 pm
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    I wish I’d have seen this article an hour ago before I reset windows. Crap.

    1. Anonymous said on April 18, 2021 at 7:48 am
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      I have never updated Windows 10 on two PCs. Haven’t reset anything, haven’t wasted time updating. MS is a disaster. They obviously don’t care about their customers, other than to siphon data from them.

  11. Anonymous said on April 16, 2021 at 7:59 pm
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    I want Windows 7 back. Windows 10 is beta scamware.

    1. PJ said on April 17, 2021 at 8:32 pm
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      I wholeheartedly agree. Other possibility would be to use modified Windows 8.1 with a better start menu. I even made my own installation media for this. Windows 10 is not worth wasting our time with. My workflow suffers terribly when I have to use Win 10. Everything changes, resets back… It is a nightmare. 6 years on the market and * [Editor: removed] Microsoft hasn’t been able to make Win 10 just work.

  12. Mike said on April 16, 2021 at 5:26 pm
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    My Surface Book 2 no longer charges. I can run plugged in, but both batteries are now at zero percent, which also makes it impossible to detach the tablet. It’s a nightmare.

  13. VioletMoon said on April 16, 2021 at 4:45 pm
    Reply

    Download the standalone version and install with PowerShell.

  14. Craig said on April 16, 2021 at 2:03 pm
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    After installing, could no longer boot into Windows 10. Had to use “Disable driver signature enforcement” to startup and that brought me into Windows. DISM and SFC discovered problems and fixed them, but tried update again and had same problem. I’ve stopped updates for now and hope to see a fix from Microsoft soon.

    1. Anonymous said on April 16, 2021 at 7:50 pm
      Reply

      Similar problems as Craig as update/reboot process hung my computer on restart. I had to force power off, remove laptop battery and restart, which caused it to go into a Windows repair process. Once the repair was completed, it attempted to finish the update, but could not. The result was an automatic roll-back of this update and I could login again.

      Tried the process a second time with the same results.

      Will be pausing my updates for 30 days to see if patch or May updates will supersede and correct this update from April.

  15. JohnIL said on April 16, 2021 at 10:49 am
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    Microsoft just piles on more garbage fixes to try and stem the monthly attacks. Its that old saying that the cure might be worse then the disease. Yeah, if I was a gamer or even just a home user. I seriously doubt that many of the threats are even targeting a individual. We of course pay the price for all this with more and more security measures which in some way do slow down our devices.

  16. pwned said on April 16, 2021 at 10:02 am
    Reply

    Again people.

    Delay feature updates by at least a year or longer, so then all the bleeding edge nonsense coding is more mature and stable and issues like this are solved by the time such updates come down the pipes to you, the wiser user who chose not to be a guinea pig for bad coding by MS people.

    Feature upgrades dont mean security updates, like some ppl thinks its OK to still be using 1709 when they should be currently on 1909 which will die in a month or two, by then 20h1 should be stable enough for the subset of users who suffer from issues like this.

    1. pwned said on April 16, 2021 at 10:03 am
      Reply

      I actually meant 2004 not 20h1 or whatever version after 1909 is.

  17. Gary said on April 16, 2021 at 4:37 am
    Reply

    (KB5001330) Proton VPN has a new version/update available after KB5001330 windows installer fails installing or uninstalling

  18. Anonymous said on April 16, 2021 at 3:42 am
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    The 5001330 for 2004/20H2 is installing and reverting on approx 5% of the machine i have installed it on

  19. Galahad said on April 16, 2021 at 2:16 am
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    “The primary issue appears to be frame drops in games, and this appears to be related to the VSync setting. Other issues reported by users include lag spikes, i.e., a sudden massive slowdown or stutter that happens for a few seconds.”
    Hi,
    I have a RTX 2060 graphic card and I experienced massive slowdown in windows and frame drops in games.
    I guess it is a problem between the new Microsoft april update and the geforce drivers.

  20. Joe Cadena said on April 15, 2021 at 11:12 pm
    Reply

    Hello.
    My laptop updated at night, and today when I rebooted to update take effect, the performance gone bad.
    Before the update my laptop started since I press on button, about one minute, 13 sec since I pushed the button, and once I logged in, 40 sec more to start Teams, Outlook, Onedrive and Teamviewer.
    Now I push the button and booted in 30sec, but when I logged in, it took 34minutes to start the rest, and while started, I can’t work with any program.
    If anyone has a tip to share, I would appreciate it
    Thanks.

    1. Udit Dokania said on April 16, 2021 at 6:36 pm
      Reply

      I experience performance issue with my cpu after the update. My cpu clock was fixed at 0.78ghz after changeing my power settings that got solved. I was still experiencing the performance issue so i went through geeksbench5 and the results show significant drop in multicore performance i got score of around 1800. To check if the this was an update issue i booted my machine on Ubuntu and ran geeksbench5 in ubuntu and the performance on multiple core was 5100. To fix the issue i had to reinstall the window again, definitely there was some issue with the new window updated. After reinstall of windows i was getting score of around 4800.
      Things i noticed single core performance was not at all effected. The issue was when doing some multicore task.

  21. Anonymous said on April 15, 2021 at 10:53 pm
    Reply

    (KB5001330) is causing more trouble .full day wasted trying to update (KB5001330). it stops at 20% update.after trying to install 100% and restart the computer unable to update the update message comes going back to previous built

    1. Anonymous said on May 1, 2021 at 6:29 am
      Reply

      same here. i dont know how to install it

  22. Peterc said on April 15, 2021 at 10:37 pm
    Reply

    Only a gamer would list performance drop in games ahead of boot loops! ;-)

  23. John Wold said on April 15, 2021 at 10:03 pm
    Reply

    I can see quality control in Microsoft is consistent. What’s the point of telemetry and all that info the collect if their updates are still broken.

    1. Anonymous said on April 16, 2021 at 8:21 am
      Reply

      Youre supposed to blindly accept the reasons from the convicted monopolist and dataminer again and again. How else will they still be relevant in another 20, 40 years? just update and be a good product :)

  24. Jojo said on April 15, 2021 at 9:37 pm
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    I don’t know if this problem (or change in function) is related to this particular fix or not but what I have noticed is that when my computer goes into deep sleep now, toughing the keyboard or mouse no longer wakes it up so I get the Windows logon screen.

    Now I have to press the physical hardware on/off button to wake up the computer.

    Was this perhaps a security fix?

    1. McKenna said on April 30, 2021 at 12:15 pm
      Reply

      I can confirm that the sleep problem and the stuttering is resolved after KB5001391 update. There still is a problem with chrome’s initial latency when you launch it but I suspect other suspects for it.

      1. McKenna said on May 4, 2021 at 2:07 pm
        Reply

        Well…after days of fighting with the computer the main culprit definitively turned out to be the latest AMD Radeon 7700m graphics card driver and software update, of which its date coincided with Windows update. Rolling it back from 21.4.1 to 20.11.3 was another adventure but I don’t have anyting to complain now at all.

    2. McKenna said on April 29, 2021 at 5:01 pm
      Reply

      I have the same problem and found this page while trying to resolve it. I can’t wake it up with mouse and booting takes very long. Once in a while everything freezes for a few seconds like a stutter… I’m updating to ’20H2 preview KB5001391″ right at this moment. Have you found a solution except uninstalling the update that took almost a whole day to install?

    3. William said on April 17, 2021 at 3:45 am
      Reply

      Same problem here. Also take a look at your pagefile.sys file. Mine grew to 29 GB. YES 29GB. Also I don’t game but I have a gaming LENOVO laptop with 256 SsD plus 32GB of memory. I run mostly microsoft programs that now take forever to open and close. When I shut down my machine it takes about 5 mins

      This just started after this update

  25. beemeup5 said on April 15, 2021 at 8:19 pm
    Reply

    Another day, another Windows update borking your system. This is one the reasons why I don’t bother updating Windows. Aside from not wanting to, you actually don’t NEED to either.

    Feature updates are useless and can introduce more problems and variables, while 99.9% of security updates are for mitigating “physical access” vulnerabilities for enterprise settings where malevolent actors can often have in-person access to systems connected to the main network, or vulnerabilities in Edge / IE and Remote Desktop (RDP).

    If your PC just sits at home and you use a different browser than IE / Edge and literally any other remote desktop application aside from RDP, you do not need Windows security updates. As for Windows Defender, it’s garbage that only gets in your way and slows you down whenever you download a file or try to run an installer. People think it’s “good enough” but if viruses are actually a concern of yours, “good enough” is in fact not good enough. You get what you pay for. But rather than investing (and praying) in antivirus it’s better to have a robust backup / cloning solution.

    With plugin vectors like Flash and Java going the way of the dodo “drive-by” malware is now largely extinct. Installing Adguard or uBlock Origin in your browser will protect you from nearly all web threats. Also not downloading sketchy stuff from shady sites should go without saying because no software in the world can prevent PEBKAC.

  26. Anon said on April 15, 2021 at 8:14 pm
    Reply

    I experienced the same issues (random game stuttering even in light gaming) with this update (i7 9700k + rtx 3060ti). Uninstalled and blocked it.

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