14 DAY TRIAL // The most recent Windows 11 preview build was shipped to both the Dev and the Beta channels, therefore getting us a step closer to receiving highly-anticipated improvements on production devices.
But as it turns out, the software giant has one major glitch to resolve before this can even happen.
Windows Defender, the antivirus that comes bundled with Windows 11 out of the box, is apparently causing video files to load much slower than before the update. Users claim the issue only happens on Windows 111 build 22581, and the culprit is the SmartScreen feature that’s supposed to protect devices from malicious downloads.
The issue was first reported on reddit, and while Microsoft is yet to acknowledge it, several users have already confirmed the same behavior on their devices.
Disabling app and files checks
Disabling the automatic checks for apps and files seems to bring things back to normal, allowing video files to load properly without painful waiting times.
“As someone who edits multi-gigabyte video files regularly, I had no idea why my computer was effectively hanging for up to half a minute every time I tried to open a large video file when they used to just open instantaneously. I was about to throw Windows 11 out completely over this issue until I found this thread. If there's some way for a code exploit in an h264 mp4 file to infect my system with a virus we have bigger issues to worry about with regards to the OS's security,” someone explains in a post on reddit.
While Microsoft hasn’t said a single thing about this glitch, I expect the company to already be aware of this behavior, and hopefully, the next build shipping to Windows Insiders would include a fix on this front.
A new build is expected this week for the Dev channel, so a cumulative update is probably required to resolve the glitch in the Beta channel.