14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 version 2004, or May 2020 Update, was officially released in the spring of this year, and general availability is yet to be announced.
What this means is that Microsoft is still actively working on refining the performance with the update and resolving the bugs that users might come across after installing it.
And most recently, the Redmond-based software giant has managed to address an issue that was causing an external screen to go black when drawing using an Office app.
This isn’t necessarily a bug that was widespread and which many people came across, but given it affected the Office productivity suite on external monitors, which is clearly a setup supposed to help boost productivity, it was critical for everybody to get a fix as soon as possible.
Microsoft explains in a recent advisory that the whole thing has been fixed now, and all Windows 10 users need to do is just install the latest Windows 10 version 2004 cumulative update.
“If you have a device running Windows 10 version 2004 with a built-in screen (such as a laptop or tablet) and a connected external display set to Duplicate your primary screen, you might see both monitors flicker and the external monitor go black if you try to draw using an Office app (such as Word). This can also happen with some other apps capable of drawing, such as Whiteboard. If you check in Device Manager, your graphics controller will have a warning icon next to it (a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it),” Microsoft explains.
The update that you need to install is KB4577063, which was published by Microsoft as a preview on October 1 (the newer cumulative updates will also do the trick, as they include all the previously-released improvements).
On the other hand, what’s very important to know is that installing this cumulative update could lead to other issues, and one of them is a certificate bug that Microsoft has already acknowledged and which can only be resolved by restoring the previous Windows 10 version you were running.
In other words, the software giant recommends users losing system and user certificates after installing an OS with this cumulative update included to downgrade and wait for a fix and updated bundles and refreshed media.
“System and user certificates might be lost when updating a device from Windows 10, version 1809 or later to a later version of Windows 10. Devices will only be impacted if they have already installed any Latest cumulative update (LCU) released September 16, 2020 or later and then proceed to update to a later version of Windows 10 from media or an installation source which does not have an LCU released October 13, 2020 or later integrated. This primarily happens when managed devices are updated using outdated bundles or media through an update management tool such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager. This might also happen when using outdated physical media or ISO images that do not have the latest updates integrated,” Microsoft explained.
Microsoft is projected to release new cumulative updates with even more fixes next week as part of the November 2020 Patch Tuesday cycle, though this time the focus would be on resolving security problems in Windows 10 and the pre-loaded components.
All Windows 10 versions will get improvements, including the May 2020 Update. The newest version of Windows 10 at the time of writing is the October 2020 Update, which is now gradually rolling out to systems across the world.