Microsoft's December update for Windows 10 is causing performance woes on some PCs

Unfortunately for some Windows 10 users, this month's cumulative update is causing headaches, and it does not appear as though a fix is in sight. Those affected by whatever is going on report a range of performance symptoms, such as long load times for certain programs, and jumps in resource usage.

Otherwise known as a Patch Tuesday update, these kinds of cumulative patches are doled out to Windows PCs on the second Tuesday of every month. In this case, December 8. Users started complaining of issues almost right away.

In a thread over on Microsoft's support forum (via Windows Latest), one of the first complaints is the inability to "stream on Twitch when HDR is on without having lag on the camera movement of the game."

Another user complained about their PC's Bluetooth functionality being broken after the update, and multiple posts claim to have run into blue screen of death error messages.

There is also a thread on Reddit filling up with complaints about various bugs seemingly introduced by this month's cumulative update.

"I am getting some weird spiking CPU usage after my update. Like shooting up to 100 percent up and down with just a browser open," a user wrote.

"This update has caused me massive lag spikes on my laptop (Intel Pentium Gold, not sure what version but 2017, and 8GB RAM). I've just made the decision to uninstall it entirely which is advice I've found through scrolling through this comment section. Hopefully everything works well now," another user chimed in.

In some cases, users report having trouble just getting the cumulative update to install, with Windows 10 tripping up and reporting missing files and a promise to "try to download the update again later." That seems to be a recurring theme with these monthly updates.

Fortunately, I'm not seeing massively long threads filled with complaints. Microsoft has made efforts with its update process to avoid these kinds of issues as much as possible, and anecdotally, I've not run into problems with the most recent update on my main PC. But with so many hardware combinations in the wild, issues are inevitable.

Still, it is frustrating for those who are running into problems. Microsoft has not yet acknowledged any performance issues with its newest cumulative update, so it remains to be seen if it will dole out a fix at some point.