14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has officially confirmed that it’s looking into reports of high CPU usage experienced on devices where Windows 10 cumulative update KB4512941 was installed.
The update, which was published on August 30, is specifically aimed at Windows 10 version 1903, or May 2019 Update, and comes as optional.
After the installation, however, cumulative update KB4512941 is said to cause high CPU usage for a process called SearchUI.exe and belonging to digital assistant Cortana.
Removing the update restores the normal CPU usage levels, and an alternative manual workaround requires users to enable the default functionality of the search feature that sends queries to Bing.
Next Patch Tuesday on September 10
The cumulative update was originally shipped to users in the Release Preview ring and then published for production devices with no known issues on the KB page. The official update dashboard for Windows 10 version 1903 does not point to any high CPU bug experienced with this cumulative update.
Microsoft doesn’t provide an ETA as to when a fix could be released, but the company does say that it’s currently investigating reports to determine the cause of the problem.
“We are currently investigating an issue where users are reporting high CPU usage linked to SeachUI.EXE after installing the optional update on August 30 (KB4512941). We will provide an update in an upcoming release,” the official Windows Update account says in a post on Twitter.
The next Patch Tuesday, when Microsoft releases security updates for Windows and other products, will take place on September 10, and cumulative updates will be shipped for all Windows 10 versions. At this point, however, it’s not yet clear if a fix for the high CPU usage bug would be included or not, but there’s a chance the company needs more time to determine what exactly is causing the problem.