Microsoft says the broken cursor only hits people not running Windows in English

Last week we wrote about people installing the optional KB5120998 preview update and finding their mouse pointer reverted to a fat white default and their wallpaper turned solid black. Microsoft has now confirmed both, and the reason behind the cursor one is unusually precise: "This issue is caused by code components used in non-English Windows installations." Run Windows in French, German, Polish, Romanian or Ukrainian and you're in the affected group. English installs are not.

The wallpaper entry went up on 2 September. It says desktop settings fail to load after the 27 August update, so the background falls back to a solid black, and slideshow settings and contrast themes can break alongside it. The sentence that matters most is this one: "attempting to manually restore customized settings does not work." Choosing your wallpaper again won't stick, because the fault is in the loading, not in the value you saved.

Which means there's nothing to repair yourself. Microsoft says a resolution is coming "in a future Windows update" with no date attached, and the next scheduled release is Patch Tuesday on 8 September. Worth remembering how these machines got here, too: KB5120998 is an optional preview with no security content, and it only installs if you opened Windows Update and clicked Download and install under optional updates. Skip it and none of this touches you.

Since the repair arrives through Windows Update rather than anything local, the only useful move left is not to miss it. Tendvane's Health score flags when Windows has updates sitting unfinished, which is how a fix like this gets installed the week it lands instead of a month later.