Windows 10 Anniversary Update breaks millions of webcams using MJPEG or H264 encoded streams; Microsoft engineer says fix is coming, likely in September update
Context & Ripple Effects
Days into the Windows 10 Anniversary Update rollout, Microsoft has a compatibility problem on its hands: webcams that stream MJPEG or H264 encoded video stopped working after the upgrade, affecting what Thurrott describes as millions of devices. A Microsoft engineer has acknowledged the breakage and pointed to the September update as the likely delivery vehicle for a fix.
The episode fits a longer pattern in the coverage: Microsoft's own camera stack keeps breaking at the OS boundary, from this update to the later Surface Pro X camera failure traced to a faulty Qualcomm driver. Each incident lands on the same tension between aggressive update cadence and peripheral compatibility.
First-order effects
- Users who upgraded to the Anniversary Update and own MJPEG- or H264-based webcams lose camera functionality immediately, with no workaround offered beyond waiting for the September patch.
- Microsoft's support channels absorb the load: an engineer publicly confirming the bug signals the company knows the scale and is managing expectations rather than denying the problem.
Second-order effects
- Webcam makers whose devices depend on those encoded streams face a wave of returns and support tickets they cannot fix themselves, since the fault sits in Microsoft's update rather than their drivers.
- Enterprises mid-way through Windows 10 deployments get a concrete reason to stagger or hold upgrades until the September fix ships — the same caution that later surrounded Microsoft's rapid response to the critical cryptographic flaw patched across all Windows versions.
Third-order effects
- If camera-breaking updates recur — as the later Surface Pro X incident suggests they do — Microsoft faces structural pressure to expand pre-release peripheral testing and give users more control over when updates install, since forced upgrades turn one bad frame pipeline change into millions of broken devices overnight.
The trend: Windows' forced-update cadence keeps colliding with camera and driver compatibility, making peripheral breakage a recurring cost of Microsoft's push to keep every PC on the latest build.