Microsoft Windows 10 Update Is Causing Millions Of Users Webcams To Freeze Up

Windows 10 anniversary update released by Microsoft few weeks ago has caused a backslash to the company, Consumers and some businesses has been complaining that the update has cause third party USB camera to malfunctions. The windows 10 update came with two compression format, the H.264 and MJPEG codecs to prevent performance issues, now the app is now causing more issues instead.

Millions of  windows users are discovering that their webcams is now freezing up, each time they try to use it, even the pre-installed Microsoft-owned Skype app. the issued affect major peripheral makers like Logitech. Not just that any apps that rely on the codecs will also encounter such issue on the software side.

Here is Microsoft statement regarding the issue:

“Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows. We have seen a small number of reports of unexpected behaviors following the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Engineering and customer support are investigating these on a case by case basis and offering trouble-shooting tips as necessary. If a customer has any issues, we offer customer support at www.microsoft.com/support.

But if you already just installed the windows 10 anniversary update you can downgrade/revert windows 10 version within 10 days. And if you are ready to make changes to the windows registry thurrott contributor Rafeal Rivera suggest a soft temporal solution to fix the MJPEG for you, he advised on his twitter handle that you make the below changes:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform, add DWORD "EnableFrameServerMode" and set to 0.

Having said that, windows 10 Users will have to wait a little longer for the issues to be completely fix, for the mean time it is advice users stick to their phone video camera for now.

Source: Thurrott