Well, this is a new one! A recently released Windows 10 cumulative update has been found to be silently deleting some applications. More specifically, apps that come preloaded with the OS.
The culprit in question is KB4565503, which was released as part of the Patch Tuesday cycle of updates this month. This cumulative update is specifically aimed at devices running Windows 10 version 2004, also known as the May 2020 Update.
Apparently, this issue only affects a small set of users.
But as these unlucky users found out, a bunch of their apps that typically come bundled with the operating system were no longer there after they deployed KB4565503 on their PCs.
These included WordPad, Notepad, and Paint, and possibly others.
In other words, they were stealth uninstalled, and the only way to get these applications back is to manually reinstall them one by one. The good news is that installing them takes but a few clicks, and only requires a visit to the optional features panel in Windows 10.
Redmond seems blissfully unaware of this problem, as the company lists only one known issue with this update. That bug is a glitch in Microsoft IME that only affects the Chinese and Japanese languages.
The good news, for the time being, is that not a lot of users are impacted by this problem.
But exercise caution, nonetheless.
