- Windows 11’s February 2025 cumulative update has arrived
- It packs a host of cures including the resolution of an Auto HDR bug that was messing up colors and causing games to crash
- Important audio fixes are also present, and the cure for a nasty problem with webcams
Windows 11 has a new cumulative update, and it brings forth some important fixes for bugs that have been annoying a good many people.
Bleeping Computer spotted the release notes for the February 2025 update for Windows 11 which emerged yesterday and should be available on PCs now. This is patch KB5051987 for Windows 11 24H2, but if you’re still on 23H2, it’s KB5051989.
The update cures one of the (many) bugs that gamers have found seriously frustrating, whereby colors are messed up by the Auto HDR feature. This has now been resolved, as have the crashes in games that were being reported due to this issue, as well.
Another major fix here is for the bug that killed the audio output of those using an audio DAC (digital-to-analog converter) with their PC, although this affected other users too (you were just more likely to run into the problem if you use a DAC).
DAC or no DAC (I feel a gameshow idea coming on), the bug has been squashed with the new update, as has another audio glitch which caused a ‘This device cannot start’ error to appear (though that was a less common problem, and not one I’ve heard of before).
Finally, remember the issues with USB webcams where they weren’t being detected properly? You can kiss goodbye to those camera woes, too, as Microsoft tells us that this bug (caused by the previous January 2025 cumulative update) is now a thing of the past.
Analysis: Fixing the holes where the bugs get in…
You may recall that the Auto HDR fix arrived in the preview update for January (an optional affair at the end of last month), so the good news is that it hasn’t caused any problems in the final testing stages, and so can now be applied to Windows 11 PCs across the board.
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that the compatibility hold which was put on PCs that would’ve been affected by this bug has now been lifted, so if your computer was prevented from grabbing 24H2 due to this gremlin, you should be able to get the big update soon.
Whether you’ll want to make that leap yet is another question, of course, as 24H2 has proved quite problematic in terms of various bugs manifesting since its launch.
Hopefully we’re over the worst of all that, though, and as we can see here, Microsoft is now working at a fair old pace to resolve the miscellaneous glitches that have affected Windows 11 users who’ve moved to the latest version (which is now underway with a wider rollout).