VPN broken, Explorer crashes, external monitors vanish

The update that added Start Menu ads also broke your computer. VPN connectivity failed. File Explorer crashed when navigating to Home or Gallery. External monitors stopped being recognized. Mouse performance became laggy. Profile picture changes broke with error 0x80070520. Microsoft chose this update — the one that injected advertisements into the Start Menu — to also ship with a basket of functionality regressions. At least the ads worked flawlessly.