Posted on 08/20/2016 11:07:16 AM PDT by Swordmaker
The Windows 10 Anniversary Update for PCs started rolling out more than two weeks ago. While many have been happy with the new features and improvements it brings, thousands of others are reportedly experiencing critical issues, that are rendering their machines unresponsive.
The news of the OS causing system freezes broke out a couple of days after the rollout of the Anniversary Update began, and now a new report suggests that the update has caused another frustrating issue for users around the globe.
Brad Sams on Thurrott.com reports that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update broke millions of webcams. He states that:
Microsoft made a significant change with the release of Windows 10 and support for webcams that is causing serious problems for not only consumers but also the enterprise. The problem is that after installing the update, Windows no longer allows USB webcams to use MJPEG or H264 encoded streams and is only allowing YUY2 encoding.
Apparently, Microsoft made the aforementioned change because with the Anniversary Update, there are new methods for applications to access webcams, and the MJPEG and H264 encoding could have caused poor performance in systems. Hence, the company limited users to specific input methods to avoid the issue.
However, a problem which supposedly passed unseen through the company's internal testing procedures and Windows Insider Program feedback, is that when a webcam tries to use MJPEG or H264, the device freezes. The issue impacts not only consumers but enterprise users as well, and affects a variety of webcams, including those manufactured by Logitech.
Microsoft has addressed the inconvenience in a support thread, where an engineer from the company has stated that:
The team has been reading through all your replies over the weekend. I can understand your and your customers’ frustration, and the team can very much relate. Some of the points raised in this thread cannot be argued with, and we appreciate you bringing those to our attention in this discussion.
Right now we’re investigating the best way to address the behavior that is causing these problems. Once we have that, MJPEG and H.264 will no longer be filtered out, so your applications should continue to work as before without any changes. At the moment we have a prototype of the MJPEG update being tested, and once we validate it works well, we’ll look to publishing it out to customers who have already updated to the Anniversary Update, through our servicing channels.
[...] The decoded formats will continue to be offered, and as time passes, we hope that application developers will adopt these where possible, since we still believe they bring benefits in the new camera landscape. That being said, we’ve learned a lot from this launch and will be making improvements based on these learnings for the future, and we again would like to apologize for the confusion this may have created.
The good news is that a fix for the issue is hopefully coming in September; however, Rafael Rivera, technical contributor at Thurrott.com, has apparently discovered an unofficial solution to the problem already. You can view it on Twitter here, but do keep in mind that it involves tweaking with the registry, which can render your device unusable, if done incorrectly. Editing the registry is not recommended for inexperienced users.
Source: Microsoft via Thurrott.com | Image via Wikimedia
Microsoft ... for folks ehose time isnt actually worth anything. (Evil grin)
“One thing I left out is “ttf-mscorefonts-installer”.
I was just going to ask you about that.:-)
(I still have trouble putting e-mails into folders.)
Now back to my abacus and slate.
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Breaks webcams? Good! This means they cannot spy on you thru the camera.
AH! Classic Microsoft! It's not a bug, it's a feature.
That wasn’t my goal ... but there’s a huge pile-on effect on any MSFT thread, usually with a lot of wistful text about some Windows or DOS at least two versions old. I enjoyed starting my Apple 2 from an assembly prompt once ... once.
Anyway my last was over the top and I apologize.
I’ve been watching this project with some anticipation: http://www.reactos.org
It is still in alpha stage. But, if the project team can deliver on their vision; you will have a free, lightweight, open source windows platform.
Thanks, Free Republic is full of liberty-minded, Constitutional-abiding, hard-working, American Patriots.
While Democrat Underground is full of ignorant, lazy, folks who want to undermine the Constitution and use the power of big government to rob their fellow hard-working Americans for themselves or how they see fit.
It’s two totally different mindsets so that is why it’s hard to see Free Republic compared to DU in any way. Thanks again for understanding.
CGato
It is still in alpha stage. But, if the project team can deliver on their vision; you will have a free, lightweight, open source windows platform.
Yes, I downloaded an earlier version live CD of this. I can't remember what issues I ran in to but still being in early stages, I thought it was pretty cool. It will be a nice Windows alternative if they continue to get this developed.
CGato
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Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!!
Late to the party, but better late than never... :-) Been out all day, just now getting online...
I do not recall getting an anniversary update although I have Windows 10 installed from a year ago.
FWIW, my personal solution to this problem: Running Win 7 with updates turned off. No problems so far. Have applied the Win 7 Roll Up.
Win 7 forever!
Thank you for the tips on going to Linux. I’m going to hang onto my Windows 7 system for as long as I can, but when I reach the end of that road, I’ll be switching over.
When I downloaded 10 to my other computer is said you could go back within 30 days... but there’s nothing about how to do it...
As long as it hasn't been past the 30 days the Revert back to previous windows option will still be there but after 30 days, it disappears. Here is a video on how to revert back to previous windows OS.
Yeah! That’s what I thought too! GMTA!
The closest you can come is if you use a laptop or a desktop equipped with a WiFi card. It seems that MS recognized the risks associated with metered connections (any connection where you are charged by the data consumed rather than simply a monthly fee) and made allowances to allow filtering of updates if you specified a metered connection.
Please note that you cannot do this with a wired Ethernet connection. As a result, I will only install Win-10 onto laptops and I won’t trust my data to any of them.
I expect that to change any day with them, given their horrible track record.
Where do we sign up for the class action suit?!
Win-10 Anniversary update is 3.5gig - bloatware
Thanks for sharing that Gato...
And that's the rub. Until MS goes back to a more Windows 7-ish type of O/S, they won't gain any new users, especially not me.
I use Windows 7 primarily on all of my computers, however, I have a removable hard drive tray that allows me to insert hard drives with different operating systems on my main computer. For that desktop, I have a hard drive with XP, one with 7, and one with 10. My laptop can utilize either one of two hard drives, one with XP and one with 7. My media tower has 7 exclusively, as does a laptop someone just gave me that previously ran Vista.
I will pop the Windows 10 disk in at times to let it update and to piddlefart around with it, but until someone can develop a way to turn off the automatic updates I won't use it on a consistent basis.
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