Latest Windows 10 update breaks Windows Media Player, Win32 apps in general

Part of the group Cydnidae, these are a type of shield bug. These two are apparently on the verge of producing a number of additional shield bugs. (credit: jacinta lluch valero (jaclluch at Flickr))
The important data loss bug that interrupted the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, version 1809, may be fixed, but it turns out there are plenty of other weird problems with the release.
As spotted by Paul Thurrott, the update also breaks the seek bar in Windows Media Player when playing 'specific files.'
This is the kind of bug that leaves me scratching my head, wondering what changed to break such a thing, and why. The various old and new Windows media stacks are certainly complicated beasts, but it's not clear what the October 2018 Update even changed in this area. At least this time around, it doesn't seem that the bug was reported before 1809 actually shipped, though it's hard to be definitive about this given the difficulty in finding anything in the Feedback Hub bug reporting tool. Microsoft does promise to fix the bug, but the timeframe is vaguely open-ended: it will be 'in an upcoming release.'
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments