NVIDIA has rolled out its own fix after it was discovered that a now-infamous Windows update caused even more problems than previously known. At this point, the Windows 11 update known as KB5066835 could, more or less, be thought of as the update that broke Microsoft’s latest OS, and while it remained functional for many, there were also many problems introduced that required fixing. Before digging into the newest findings regarding gaming performance, let’s take a look at all the other fun things already known about last month’s update, which rolled out just as Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10.
- USB devices such as keyboards/mice would no longer function in the Windows Recovery environment, meaning if you needed to do an OS repair/restore, you were out of luck using traditional means of user input.
- Broke localhost, thus preventing developers from having access to the needed web applications for their own projects.
- Task Manager would not close for some users, and would proceed to duplicate when they attempted to close it.
And now we’re up to the latest feature of KB5066835; the bonus of having between 10-30 FPS reduced in some games, and according to one user, more than 50% was lost, in Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. This caught the attention of engineers at NVIDIA, who last week rolled out a hotfix driver, which apparently did the trick because it wasn’t long after that gamers began posting how it restored up to 50% in performance for select titles. Sadly, one of those who posted about it stated they had reported it to Microsoft not long after the Windows update launched, but it took NVIDIA to fix it thereafter.
I reported this problem to Microsoft about a month ago and even provided a system trace of the game running with lower performance, but they still couldn't/didn't fix it. Instead, NVIDIA had to work around their gross incompetence and release a Hotfix Driver to address it.
— Sebastian Castellanos (@Sebasti66855537) November 20, 2025
They also said that Rise of the Ronin, Star Citizen, and Valheim were other titles witnessed to have degraded performance following the Windows update. Another person posted how NVIDIA’s hotfix driver 581.57 restored 65% FPS.
After change to DLAA and for ultra preset for example pic.twitter.com/hCtnOUjmox
— Daniel Nowak (@TheAltaiir) November 21, 2025
Meanwhile, Digital Foundry did its own testing with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and documented similar results. Their machine utilized an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor paired with an NVIDIA RTX 5090 graphics card, and the hotfix driver restored upwards of 50% of the FPS. DF also mentioned that the update created issues in Counter-Strike 2.
From last month to now, it’s been a circus for various Windows users who never know what they will encounter after turning on their machines. Those using Windows 10 had their own share of surprises, ranging from being unable to create a Windows 11 media installation tool to false notifications regarding its end of support if they’d opted for extended support. Meanwhile, Microsoft also recently had to address issues with Windows 11’s file explorer not performing as expected. Ultimately, this just goes to show that you never know what’s in store after an update is installed, and MS really needs to put more effort into its QA for them. It’s also been reported (via XDA) that one Linux distro, Zorin OS, was downloaded over 780,000 times since Windows 10 reached EoL, so MS should be paying attention to this in light of all these bugs that have popped up since.