14 DAY TRIAL // One of the cumulative updates that Microsoft released in February changed app defaults to the original settings, making some users believe that the company was doing this on purpose in order to force the adoption of its software.
But as Redmond itself said, it was actually a bug causing this behavior, and the recently released cumulative update KB3140743 comes to correct all problems.
Bug only confirmed on version 1511
KB3135173 was the cumulative update that reportedly led to the app settings reset, and Microsoft had already confirmed the issue in a statement released on February 25. It also explained that it’s all caused by some registry changes that impact how the app configuration is handled.
“We’ve seen behavior by some apps that have set themselves as default in unsupported ways by deleting or corrupting registry settings. Update KB3135173 for Windows addresses the problem and resets application defaults to the initial Windows settings when registry settings are deleted or corrupted,” Redmond said last month.
“We have worked with some of these app providers so the apps no longer exhibit this behavior in their latest versions. If a user proactively changes their default app settings using the supported method, the registry won’t be corrupted and those user settings are retained.”
The most recent cumulative update for Windows 10 1511 comes to fix this problem, according to the change log posted by Microsoft on the Windows 10 Update history page.
“Reset app default when a registry setting is deleted or corrupted and streamlined notification about the corruption,” one entry in the release notes states.
KB3140743 is a cumulative update released only for devices running Windows 10 November Update (version 1511), so in case you’re seeing the same behavior on the RTM build (10240), then a fix is not yet available. That shouldn’t happen, however, given the fact that KB3135173 was an update targeting 1511 too, so no RTM install should be impacted.