Laurence Malcom
Windows 11 has finally fixed all the serious drive slowdown issues that some users have been experiencing for a good while now, according to a new report.
Although these issues were fixed by the December cumulative update for Windows 11, as we reported at the time, even after the patch ended, some people were still complaining about the drive slowing down.
However, Newer Windows Reports say that with the latest preview patch for Windows 11 – namely KB5008353 – the full fix is being delivered, and all users should be happy, according to its own testing and other anecdotal evidence online. In the update notes, Microsoft stated that it: “Addresses a performance regression issue that occurs when you enable Update Sequence Number (USN) journaling.”
The USN journal is a record of changes made to files on your drive, so it can be linked to any remaining performance issues. a reddit The user speculates that this particular disk is the point, and notes: “I installed KB5008353 and the random write speeds of my NVME drive are about 3.5 times faster.”
Another user stated in the Microsoft Feedback Center: “Not only on NVME, even my SATA SSD is now faster. Older Windows 11 used to boot slower than Windows 10.”
Another major issue where colors were spoiled on some HDR screens was also fixed with this patch.
Microsoft says that the update addresses a “known issue that may prevent some image editors from displaying colors correctly on some High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays.”
So, no more white looking like yellow, or any other visual glitch that could be seriously annoying in photo editing apps.
KB5008353 is now in testing, as a preview update, but it will get its full release as a cumulative update for February (next week, in fact).
Analysis: a “dramatic” increase in system performance in all respects
It’s obviously comforting to see the drive speed bug finally fixed for good – hopefully, anyway – because this can halve performance and has been a serious problem for some users. Treating color misbehavior on HDR screens is also welcome, of course, and this fix came very quickly.
On the other hand, the wait for the drive performance issue to be addressed has been very long, and it is disappointing that the apparent remedy as of December 2021 does not appear to have been fully successful.
There are a bunch of important fixes in this preview update, in fact, in addition to these two major fixes, there are solutions to some problems in File Explorer, including fixing “some issues affecting the performance of File Explorer when browsing for files and selecting files”, and “A reliability issue causing File Explorer and desktop context menus to stop working.”
Reddit user mentioned above route He explains: “No more slight delays in opening context menus! Basically no more delays in anything. Even the start menu opens instantly. That was a minor thing that bothers me about the W11, but now I think I’m finally satisfied with 11.”
Another Redditor agrees: “There are multiple reports from insiders that this update is a huge increase in system responsiveness, I just installed it, and I can confirm that too.”
