Windows 10 May 2020 Update is slowing down games and causing ESENT warnings
Numerous people who have upgraded to Windows 10 May 2020 Update are seeing ESENT warnings, as well as suffering problems with reduced performance.
Users looking at the Event Viewer see multiple ESENT warnings with the event ID 642. In addition to seeing these warnings, some people are complaining of reduce game performance in titles such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty: Warzone.
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The ESENT.DLL is used by various components of Windows, and it's not clear what particular events are triggering the warning. But, as reported by Windows Latest, there are plenty of complaints popping up online in Microsoft's own forums, on Reddit and on other sites. The warnings are very varied, making references of Microsoft Edge, Windows' Catalog Database, and Video.UI.
As if the unexplained errors were not enough, some users are blighted by crashes, Blue Screens of Death (BSoDs) and massively reduced framerates in games.
Microsoft has not acknowledged that there is a problem, so there is currently no official fix or workaround. However, rolling back to a pre-Windows 10 May 2020 Update build addresses the issues for many people, while others report that the problems just fixed themselves over time. The self-fixing appears to be related to the removal of the Windows.old folder, but this has not been confirmed.
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