Microsoft confirms a second Windows 11 audio bug this month | usagoldmines.com

Microsoft has confirmed a bug in Windows 11 26H2, 25H2, and 24H2 that can cause some games and applications to crash. That’s right—even the recent major fall update 26H2 contains this issue.

It’ll happen in apps and games that use the Dolby Digital AC-3 audio decoding that’s built into Windows, which may crash when you turn up the volume, change the audio settings, or use certain audio functions.

On this support page for optional September update KB5124010, Microsoft notes this as a known issue labeled “Applications which require AC-3 audio decoding might close unexpectedly”:

After installing this update, some applications that use AC-3 (Dolby Digital) audio decoding might fail to launch or close unexpectedly when certain audio features are used. This issue primarily affects legacy applications that rely on Windows built-in audio decoding. Most modern applications are not affected.

According to Microsoft, most users likely won’t encounter this bug, as it affects “legacy” apps and games that rely on Windows’ built-in audio decoding. And to be clear, this issue is unrelated to the other September update issue involving broken USB audio.

This AC-3 problem persists even after installing optional update KB5124010 on Windows 11 25H2, and upgrading to Windows 11 26H2 doesn’t resolve the issue either. The problem is located deep in the system and affects multiple Windows 11 versions because they all share the same code base.

Microsoft is aware of the problem and working on a fix:

Microsoft is working on releasing a resolution for this issue in a future Windows update. We will provide an update when more information is available.