Microsoft brings taskbar improvements and more to Windows 10 with KB5001391 update

Microsoft has released a new "C" preview update for Windows 10 ahead of May's Patch Tuesday. With the optional KB5001391 update, anyone running Windows 10 2004 and Windows 10 20H2 can get the new News and Interests feature in the taskbar.

While there are no security fixes in this update, it is still well worth installing -- not just because of the new taskbar feature, but also because of the number of performance, stability and other non-security issues it addresses.

See also:

• Hidden settings in Windows 10 unlock new Sun Valley floating menus
• Microsoft issues emergency update to fix game performance problems caused by KB5000842 and KB5001330
• Microsoft releases KB5001391 for Windows 10 20H2 and 21H1

There are three highlights picked out by Microsoft with this update: "With news and interests on the Windows taskbar, you get quick access to an integrated feed of dynamic content, such as news, weather, sports, and more, that updates throughout the day. You can personalize your feed with relevant content tailored for you. In the coming weeks, you will be able to seamlessly peek into your feed directly from the taskbar throughout your day without disrupting your workflow. For more information".

The other two key highlights are:

• Updates an issue to prevent blank tiles from appearing on the Start menu after updating to a newer version of Windows 10.
• Adds the ability to adjust the amount of idle time before a headset goes to sleep in the Settings app for Windows Mixed Reality.

If you're interested in grabbing the update ahead of the Patch Tuesday release, you can do so via Windows Update or from the Microsoft Update Catalog. Before you do so, however, it is worth bearing in mind some of the known issues. There is a continuing problems with system and user certificates being lost, but there is also the game performance issue which caused problems for users last week.

Microsoft warns:

A small subset of users have reported lower than expected performance in games after installing this update. Most users affected by this issue are running games full screen or borderless windowed modes and using two or more monitors.

Offering a workaround, the company says:

This issue is resolved using Known Issue Rollback (KIR). Please note that it might take up to 24 hours for the resolution to propagate automatically to consumer devices and non-managed business devices. Restarting your device might help the resolution apply to your device faster. For enterprise-managed devices that have installed an affected update and encountered this issue, it can be resolved by installing and configuring a special Group Policy.

The full changelog for KB5001391 is the same as for the version of the update that was released to developers last week:

• Addresses an issue that prevents a site from transitioning out of Microsoft Edge IE Mode when expected. 
• Addresses an issue that fails to remove mandatory profiles completely when you sign out when using the “Delete cached copies of roaming profiles” Group Policy.
• Addresses an issue that causes blank tiles to appear on the Start menu with names such as “ms-resource:AppName” or "ms-resource:appDisplayName". These blank tiles represent the installed applications and appear for approximately 15 minutes after updating to a newer version of Windows 10. Installing this update prevents these blank tiles from appearing on the Start menu.
• Addresses an issue with the Microsoft Japanese Input Method Editor (IME) that prevents an app's custom candidate window from displaying correctly.
• Addresses an issue that occurs when you install inventory applications.
• Addresses an issue that includes kernel mode rules for .NET applications in Windows Defender Application Control policies. As a result, the generated policies are significantly larger than necessary.
• Addresses an issue that causes devices to fail Device Health Attestation.
• Addresses an issue that turns off S Mode when you enable System Guard Secure Launch on a system running Windows 10 in S Mode.
• Addresses an issue that causes lsass.exe memory usage to grow until the system becomes unusable. This occurs when Transport Layer Security (TLS) resumes a session.
• Addresses an issue with a race condition between Task Scheduler and the Workstation Service. As a result, users cannot automatically join a hybrid Azure Active Directory (AAD) domain and error 0x80070490 is generated. 
• Addresses an issue that causes Azure Active Directory authentication to fail after signing in on Windows Virtual Desktop machines.
• Addresses an issue that causes AAD Work Accounts to unexpectedly disappear from certain apps such Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Office.
• Addresses an issue that accidently triggers hybrid AAD joining when the Group Policy “Register domain-joined computers as devices” is set to DISABLED. For more information, see Post configuration tasks for Hybrid Azure AD join. 
• Addresses an issue with a partial Service Connection Point (SCP) configuration that causes dsregcmd.exe to stop working. This issue occurs because of a case-sensitive domain ID name comparison that occurs when joining a hybrid Azure Active Directory domain using single sign-on (SSO).
• Adds the ability to adjust the amount of idle time before a headset goes to sleep in the Settings app for Windows Mixed Reality.
• Addresses an issue that might generate a stop error when Docker containers run with process isolation.
• Addresses an issue that causes automatic enrollment and certificate retrieval to fail with the error, “The parameter is incorrect.”
• Addresses an issue that might cause Microsoft Defender Application Guard virtual machines to stop responding when Microsoft Defender Application Guard for Office opens a document. This issue might occur on some devices or in drivers that utilize GPU Hardware Accelerated Scheduling.
• Addresses an issue that prevents some media players from playing content on hybrid devices that are running with dGPU on iGPU displays.
• Addresses an issue with race conditions that cause high CPU usage. As a result, the system stops working and deadlocks occur.
• Addresses an issue with a deadlock in the New Technology File System (NTFS).
• Addresses an issue that causes DWM.exe to stop working in some cases.
• Improves the Windows Server Storage Migration Service by:
  • Adding support for migration from NetApp FAS arrays to Windows Servers and clusters.
  • Resolving multiple issues and improving reliability.
    For more information, see Storage Migration Service overview.
• Addresses an issue that might prevent an application screen from working when using a Remote Desktop ActiveX control that is embedded in an HTML page.

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