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

[mlnews]

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update bugs keep on coming.

...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."

Also in the "how did that happen" category comes another bug: some Win32 programs can't be set as the default program for a given file type. So if you want certain files to always open in Notepad, for example, you're currently out of luck. A fix for this is promised by the end of the month. Setting default program associations is something that's been in Windows for 20-something years, so it's a little alarming that it should be broken. These bugs will continue to draw scrutiny to the way Windows 10 is being developed....