Give this optional Windows 10 update a whirl if your games don’t look right

While we wait for Microsoft to go big with its chunky Sun Valley Windows 10 Update later this year, it's once more serving up an optional 'preview' of its next cumulative update. That's the one that will arrive on the second Tuesday of next month (otherwise known as Patch Tuesday). The preview release (KB4601382) chases away over 40 bugs, including an "issue with screen rendering after opening games with certain hardware configurations."

Microsoft does not go into further detail on that specific bug fix, but if you are having any kind of rendering issues at all when firing up a game—colors that are off, screen flickering, slower than expected performance—it is worth giving this optional update a shot.

The update addresses some other display issues as well. According to the release notes, it patches a quirk that is causing the Advanced Display Settings to list the wrong available refresh rates for monitors that support HDR. There is also a bug that can cause videos to flicker on low latency monitors, which gets addressed by this cumulative update as well.

Other highlights include:

• Updates an issue that displays unexpected screens during the Windows Out of Box Experience (OOBE). 
• Updates an issue that sometimes prevents the input of strings into the Input Method Editor (IME). 
• Updates an issue that might sometimes prevent some keyboard keys from working, such as the home, Ctrl, or left arrow keys. This issue occurs when you set the Japanese IME input mode to Kana. 
• Updates an issue that displays the wrong language when you sign in to a console after you change the system locale. 
• Displays the proper Envelope media type as a selectable output paper type for Universal Print queues. 
• Updates support for hole punch and stapling locations for print jobs with long edge first paper feed direction on certain printers. 

That is not a full list of fixes by any stretch, just the ones Microsoft considers to be of the most interest. There is a wide range of issues this patch aims to resolve, including a memory leak in Internet Explorer 11 (remember IE?), CAD applications failing to open if they rely on OpenGL, blue screen of death errors at startup, and a whole bunch more.

All of the same fixes will be rolled into the upcoming Patch Tuesday update, which will also include security updates and perhaps some general improvements.

If you want to get a head start on Patch Tuesday, just head to Settings > Update & Security and mash the Check for updates button. The optional update, if available, should show up below it as shown in the screenshot at the top of the article.