Devastating performance hit from KB4338825 update on AMD A9-9420 APU

For weeks I couldn’t figure out why my AMD A9-9420 based laptop bought in January 2018 became so horrifyingly slow just half a year later I can’t even use it anymore. Sure, it’s an entry level dual core laptop, but it clocks ridiculously high to 3.6 GHz and with single thread optimizations replacing multicore “Bulldozer” microarchitecture it was super responsive. It also has 4GB of RAM which is alright, but it also comes with a 256GB Samsung SSD. It’s not one of those crappy DRAM-less SSD’s, this is basically an OEM version of mid end Samsung Evo drives. Something between 750 Evo and 850 Evo. A well rounded package for not very demanding usage of music, videos, browsing and Youtube.

Except it became so slow opening Start menu takes 1-2 seconds and it opens in laggy way, opening simple JPG image takes up to 10 seconds, opening Opera browser takes like half a minute, playing 480p video on Youtube was lagging and 1080p30 was so slow it literally stalled the whole laptop and even moving mouse across the screen feels like it’s lagging and stuttering. All this at CPU usage of 0-5%. But feels like you’re having a 100% load on CPU by something.

I thought AMD drivers were the problem, but no matter what I tried, nothing changed. So I downgraded Windows 10 April Update (1803) back to Fall Creators Update (1709). And it was fine. Until it updated itself. So, after 5 total OS reinstalls, I managed to pinpoint the problem. This motherfucking KB4338825 update. As soon as it gets installed, laptop becomes the slowest thing in this world. I had to rollback from 1803 to 1709, but there is no way to selectively uninstall and disable fucking KB4338825 update, not even with the tool for this. And if I install April Update (1803), this garbage gets carried over automatically.

So, now I’m literally at a point where I can’t uncheck this update, uninstall this update and block this update from installing and fucking up my laptop. As soon as I’m on build 1709, this fucking update gets installed and fucks everything up.

If Windows Update worked like it did in Windows 7, I could reinstall OS, uncheck this update and I’d be using the laptop normally until I annoy Microsoft enough for them to finally fix this shit. But that’s just wishful thinking. God knows what else is screwing up my main rig because it often feels like it’s performing worse than i did months and years ago down to as simple things as moving mouse which just feels laggy. Sounds oddly familiar to this situation with my laptop, but since PC is so fast, it’s not as dramatic. But I can sense something is off.

So, here it is, if your PC or laptop feels like it’s entirely useless because it’s so slow (despite clean Windows 10 install), it’s because of this shitty update. I’ve left the report on Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, but I’m not expecting much because they won’t give a shit about a single user. Which just shows a sad state of PC industry. Linux is still garbage despite years of everyone saying it’ll overtake Windows and Microsoft just plain doesn’t seem to give a shit about the state of Windows or what its users want, because they know Linux is shit and we have to use their OS whether we like it or not. Which absolutely stinks as hell. And I run 3 systems, 1x Windows 10 Home and 2x Windows 10 Professional, all genuine licensed versions. Absolute fucking disgrace Microsoft.

What’s even worse, I used to have AMD E-450 APU, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD laptop and it became exactly like this at one point. Which is why I bought this newer, much faster one. Which yet again turned garbage slow with exact same symptoms. Do you know how annoying it feels that I bought a new laptop because some other update fucked up performance of that one for no logical reason and I thought it just got slow somehow? Unless Microsoft is doing this intentionally to screw AMD and subtly force people to buy new laptops and migrate to Intel because everything AMD gets slow as turd “eventually” thanks to these magical updates. After seeing this on 2 laptops with like 4-6 years of age apart, something is going on. And it stinks.

Doom bugs and glitches

While the title looks scary, it really isn’t that bad. Considering the game is brand new and hasn’t received any updates, it’s very polished. All I’ve spotted so far are basically tiny glitches… PC version btw.

Bugged intro video

Yeah, the sound for intro video is bugged. Half way through the id logo animation, sound just disappears and intro video finishes up in silence. If you click with mouse or press keys, it sometimes stops even sooner. I don’t know if it’s only on my system or not, I’m using Windows 10 64bit and Sound Blaster Z with drivers from August 2015, the latest ones for Win10…

Weapon upgrade bots glitch

This one only happens with those weapon upgrades bots that run away as you approach them. There was one in one level, can’t remember the name of the map exactly, it was a bit before the Lazarus Elevator where you have to find a yellow key to activate the elevator, you approach through a corridor and there is the weapons upgrade bot hovering above some crates and then flies away to some platform above a pool of acid or something and a lowered bridge that divides both sides. One side has a hive that you have to take down and other side a door that goes out to a platform with some space ship in the middle. Anyway, if you run towards the bot and catch it up and activating it while it’s escaping, it’ll carry you with the bot up to the platform. It was so weird as it certainly looked like a glitch because screen menu was flashing and I could see level through it as I was flying across the level until the bot stopped and then it allowed me to view the upgrade menu. This was the first time I managed to catch the upgrade bot and glitch it out…

Summoner attack gets stuck in endless rapid speed firing mode

This one happened quite few times and I don’t think it’s intended. It often happens you run for cover behind a corner and Summoner starts firing its red projectile with super speed past the corner indefinitely. It’s not the red marker first and then actual fire with tiny pause in between, it’s just rapid fire fire fire fire one after another so it’s basically impossible to get past without getting fried. Could be because of Nightmare difficulty, but considering this never happens in normal combat situations when it has you in sight, I don’t think this is suppose to be happening. It just looks off.

Game closes without an error (UPDATE: 2016.05.17)

I don’t know what’s going on, but this was the second time game has done this. It just closes without errors or warnings, even Event Viewer has no entry for the incident. Almost as if the game closes per user command, that’s why there is no errors or logs. But I’m not doing it, I’m quite certain of that.

Other than this, I haven’t really spotted any other problems. Incredibly polished game considering how complex it really is with all the collectables, upgrades and settings. If Bethesda and id check out these bugs, it would become pretty much flawless.

Anyone else spotted any other glitches in single player?

Display not waking up after being turned off overnight

So, another rant time. My PC is turned on pretty much 24/7, including when I’m sleeping. I set the music to play on low volume, sometimes I run BOINC client or something, so basically system is running. But since I don’t need display, I always turn it off. In the morning, when I wake up, try to turn the display on and then  it’s rage mode on.

Display refuses to wake. Smashing keyboard and mice, nothing. Music is playing normal, Caps and Num lock responds on keyboard and I can also control music with keyboard multimedia controls. Only way to get to the system was to reset it.

So, I checked on The Internet and found out there are LOADS of people with such problems. Mostly seems to be related to Windows 7, Windows 8 in combination with AMD Radeon graphic card (usually HD7xxx series). I didn’t think of it because with Windows 7 I never had such problems, only when I switched to Windows 8.1. I’m using AMD Radeon HD7950 3GB with AMD Catalyst 13.12, so that’s where similarities with other reports started to make sense. Supposedly this problem was happening before, AMD fixed it with some Catalyst version and now with Catalyst 13.12 WHQL, it seems to be back again.

What’s even more annoying is the difficulty of reproducing this issue. It’s not enough to keep PC running and turn off the display by hand, it actually has to be over night. Like AMD drivers are checking that display is turned off over night and it fucks up everything with that. Because when I turn off display through the day, I never had this problem, even though the conditions were identical and the display was turned off for the same period of time (~6 hours). So, 6 hours over day and the problem never happened to me. Have it turned of for 6 hours over night (between midnight and 7 AM), pretty much every single morning, the damn thing won’t wake up when I move the mice around.

I’ve tried everything, changing USB devices sleeping, changed CPU C states, disabled ULPC for graphic card, checked BIOS settings, nothing.

Symptoms:

Display won’t wake up after being turned off over night with PC actually running and not being in a sleep state. Display is set to turn itself of after PC is idle for 15 minutes. Keyboard and mouse seem to be responsive, but Windows refuses to wake up the display. Pressing ON/OFF button on display doesn’t make any difference, changing input mode (between VGA and DVI) using display built-in settings (or button) doesn’t make any difference. It just stays in sleep mode.

This only happens if display is turned off over night for ~6 hours. It never happened when PC was in the same exact conditions over day. Seems like AMD throws the graphic card into some sort of deeper sleep state if it’s night time based on local time read from user computer. And since it’s happening mostly on AMD HD7xxx series which have ZeroCore feature, it seems to me like AMD fucked it up pretty badly.

Temporal solution:

What seems to work for me is to unplug DVI cable from graphic card and plug it back in. This seems to re-initialize the connection and the desktop instantly appears on the screen. Same should apply to HDMI and DisplayPort connections.

Some say switching to lockscreen in Windows 8 also wakes up the display, but I haven’t tested that yet.

Permanent solution:

Well have to wait for AMD to fix this damn thing. Anyone with friends at AMD who could speed things up? Because it’s really annoying and widespread issue with no real solution other than the above.