Microsoft's 24H2 update for Windows 11 has been rolling out in fits and starts, which seems appropriate—as some users, including myself and other members of the hardware team, have been beset by all sorts of strange issues since installation, including game stuttering, crashes, and audio devices mysteriously disappearing.
Microsoft has been logging many of the various known issues on its Windows release health page, and the most recent entry relates to Auto HDR. Some users have been experiencing incorrect game colours with «certain display configurations» and even full-on crashes in some games.
Microsoft has applied a compatibility hold on devices with Auto HDR enabled, meaning that these devices will not be offered the option to install 24H2 via the Windows Update release channel if they haven't installed it already.
However, that's far from the only 24H2 bug doing the rounds this holiday season. Second on the list is an entry mentioning audio issues with a «limited set of devices from one manufacturer» namely devices using Dirac Audio with cridspapo.dll.
Again, Microsoft says it's put a compatibility hold on affected PCs—but both myself and my colleague, Nick Evanson, have had audio device issues since installing the update, and neither of us uses Dirac Audio. In my case, I've had audio devices disappear, refuse to switch over (which is fun for meetings!) and odd crackling.
All of this is directly post-update, which for me also broke many of my drivers and required me to reinstall them manually. Oh, and my Windows notifications keep disappearing and reappearing en masse, too.
Polling the hardware team for odd PC experiences since installing the update reveals yet more strange behaviour. Our Jacob Fox has experienced animation glitching when minimising and maximising individual windows, which a quick Google search reveals seems to be an ongoing issue for many users.
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