The Windows Update
Wall of Shame

112 incidents and counting

33 catastrophic · proudly documented

KB5077181 Catastrophic

Boot loops, BSOD on GPUs, Wi-Fi and DHCP broken

BootBSODWi-FiDHCPNetworkingGPULogin Unfixed
Details

The update that was supposed to fix January’s catastrophe became its own catastrophe. KB5077181 traps some PCs in infinite boot loops — 15+ restarts before you might see a login screen, if you’re lucky. Certain GPU configurations get KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE BSODs courtesy of dxgmms2.sys. WPA3 Wi-Fi networks become unconnectable. DHCP breaks entirely, leaving systems showing “Connected, without Internet” on both Wi-Fi and Ethernet — which also means you can’t download the fix even if one existed. The login page itself breaks with SENS service errors. Microsoft says there are “no known issues.” The users trapped in boot loops would disagree.

KB5074105 Broken

Cameras dead, Explorer crashes, boot problems

CameraFile ExplorerTaskbarStart MenuBootStorage Fixed
Details

The January preview update, intended to fix the chaos from KB5073455, introduced its own fresh set of regressions. Integrated laptop cameras stopped working entirely. Explorer.exe crashed, taking the taskbar and Start menu with it into the void. Brief black screens appeared. Some systems needed recovery mode to boot. Storage settings suddenly demanded admin permissions for no reason. Temporary Files cleanup broke. It was the fix that needed a fix that needed a fix — a recursive loop of incompetence that wouldn’t resolve until February’s Patch Tuesday arrived to break new things.

KB5078127 Broken

Emergency patch #2 fixes Outlook, breaks lock screen

Cloud StorageOutlookOneDriveLock Screen Fixed
Details

The second emergency patch in seven days. Computing.co.uk made that their headline. KB5078127 finally fixed the cloud file I/O hangs that were freezing Outlook and any app that touched OneDrive or Dropbox. In exchange, it introduced a new bug: the password icon vanished from the lock screen sign-in options. A cosmetic bug, sure, but a fitting symbol — Microsoft’s emergency fix to restore functionality removed the icon that represents authentication. The UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME issue — the most severe problem from KB5074109, the one bricking PCs entirely — remained unfixed through both emergency patches. That wouldn’t be addressed for another 17 days, when February’s Patch Tuesday arrived with its own fresh set of catastrophes.

KB5078132 Broken

Emergency patch breaks cloud storage and Outlook

Cloud StorageOneDriveOutlookShutdownHibernation Fixed
Details

The third emergency patch in eleven days for January’s Patch Tuesday disaster. KB5078132 was supposed to fix cloud storage file access problems and Outlook PST corruption introduced by the earlier updates — apps would hang when opening files stored on OneDrive or Dropbox, and Outlook would freeze or corrupt PST files. It also carried forward the Secure Launch shutdown fix that still didn’t fully work on all systems. Neowin’s headline said it all: “Microsoft’s emergency patch broke Windows 11/10 further.” At this point, the emergency fixes needed their own emergency fixes.

KB5077744 Broken

Emergency patch #1 only fixes two of nine issues

Remote DesktopSecure LaunchSleep Mode Fixed
Details

Four days after KB5074109 broke everything, Microsoft rushed out their first emergency out-of-band patch. KB5077744 fixed exactly two things: Remote Desktop sign-in and the Secure Launch shutdown bug. It did not fix unbootable PCs. It did not fix Outlook freezing. It did not fix cloud storage hangs. It did not fix Citrix. It did not fix NVIDIA black screens. It did not fix File Explorer. Slashdot’s headline: “Microsoft Forced to Issue Emergency Out-of-Band Windows Update.” The emphasis was on “forced” — as if fixing the things you broke is an imposition. Seven other issues from KB5074109 remained unfixed, and users got to wait another week for emergency patch number two.

KB5077797 Broken

Emergency shutdown fix doesn't actually fix shutdown

ShutdownHibernationRemote Desktop Fixed
Details

Four days after January’s Patch Tuesday broke shutdown and hibernation on Secure Launch systems, Microsoft rushed out this emergency fix. It didn’t work. Administrators reported no improvement on many affected systems — PCs still restarted instead of shutting down, laptops still cooked in bags. The Remote Desktop authentication fix was equally hit-or-miss. Microsoft would need yet another emergency patch (KB5078132) a week later, which also wouldn’t fully resolve it. The actual fix wouldn’t arrive until February’s Patch Tuesday, a full month after the original break.

KB5073455 Broken

Shutdown broken, laptops overheat in bags

ShutdownHibernationSleepRemote Desktop Fixed
Details

January’s Patch Tuesday broke the most fundamental computer operation: turning it off. Systems with Secure Launch (System Guard) enabled would restart instead of shutting down. Hibernation and sleep were equally broken. On laptops, closing the lid did nothing — devices stayed fully active inside bags and sleeves, draining batteries and risking thermal damage. Intel Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake systems were particularly afflicted. Remote Desktop authentication also failed. Microsoft needed two emergency out-of-band patches (KB5077797 and KB5078132), neither of which fully fixed the issue, before February’s Patch Tuesday finally resolved it. Three patches to fix shutdown.

KB5074109 Catastrophic

PCs won't boot, Outlook broken, Remote Desktop dead

BootBSODOutlookRemote DesktopFile ExplorerSleep ModeNVIDIACloud StorageCitrix Fixed
Details

January 2026’s Patch Tuesday was a masterclass in breaking everything at once. PCs that had trouble with December’s update were greeted with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME BSODs — unbootable bricks until you could find recovery media. Outlook became “completely unusable” for POP email users, hanging in the background and refusing to relaunch. Remote Desktop and Azure Virtual Desktop stopped accepting credentials. File Explorer forgot how to read desktop.ini customizations. Secure Launch systems couldn’t shut down or hibernate — they’d restart instead. NVIDIA users got black screens and graphical artifacts. Citrix Director’s remote assist broke entirely. Apps froze when opening files on OneDrive or Dropbox. Microsoft’s official advice? “Uninstall the update.” WindowsCentral ran an article titled exactly that. WindowsLatest described it as Microsoft entering “damage control mode.” The damage would require four emergency patches over the next eleven days — and the worst issue still wasn’t fixed until February.

KB5071417 Catastrophic

Failed install creates ticking time bomb for next update

BootWindows Update Fixed
Details

December’s Patch Tuesday achieved something remarkable: it broke computers that it failed to install on. When KB5071417 failed to install and rolled back, it left devices in an “improper state” — a silent corruption that wouldn’t manifest until the next month’s security update. Installing January’s KB5074109 on these tainted systems caused boot failures with a black screen reading “Your device ran into a problem and needs a restart.” Microsoft had effectively planted a time bomb: a failed update in December that wouldn’t detonate until January, requiring manual recovery to defuse.

KB5072033 Catastrophic

Update fails and leaves PCs unbootable

Windows UpdateBootBSOD Fixed
Details

The December 2025 update was a gift that kept on giving — into January. KB5072033 would fail to install with error 0x800f0991, then leave the system in an “improper state.” Machines stuck in this limbo would later fail catastrophically when January’s update (KB5074109) tried to install, resulting in UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME BSODs and completely unbootable PCs. Microsoft didn’t fully resolve the chain of failures until February 2026 — two full months of systems bricking themselves because one December update couldn’t install cleanly. Happy holidays.

KB5070311 Broken

Dark mode broken, Intel Arc GPUs BSOD

DisplayBSODFile ExplorerInstallation Fixed
Details

The December preview update turned dark mode into a light show. File Explorer flashed white screens and went blank when dark mode was enabled, defeating the entire purpose of the feature. Intel Arc B580 GPU owners got Blue Screens of Death. Installation failures hit with error 0x80070306. The password icon on the lock screen became invisible — a recurring Microsoft favorite. Performance slowed to a crawl. At least the dark mode issue was fixed quickly in December’s Patch Tuesday, because nothing says quality assurance like shipping a preview update that breaks a basic display preference.

KB5068861 Broken

Install fails, SMB search broken, Server unusable

Windows UpdateSMBFile ExplorerWindows Server Fixed
Details

November’s update brought installation failures with errors 0x800f0306 and 0x800f081f — ASUS ROG Ally users were particularly afflicted. File Explorer’s search on SMB network shares stopped returning results, making shared drives unsearchable. Windows Server 2025 became, in the words of one Microsoft community post, “not useable anymore” after the update. Bluetooth broke on handheld devices. The update that was supposed to fix October’s problems created a fresh batch of November problems, continuing the proud tradition of each month’s fix being next month’s bug.

KB5067036 Broken

Task Manager spawns unkillable ghost copies

Task ManagerPerformanceWSLVPN Fixed
Details

The October preview update turned Task Manager into a zombie process factory. Clicking the X button to close Task Manager didn’t actually close it — instead, it spawned a hidden background instance consuming 20-25 MB of RAM. Each “close” created another ghost copy. Over time, dozens of phantom Task Manager processes accumulated, degrading system performance. The tool designed to help you manage runaway processes became a runaway process itself. WSL mirrored networking also broke with VPN clients like Cisco AnyConnect, because why not.

KB5066835 Catastrophic

Keyboard and mouse dead in Recovery Environment

Windows RecoveryUSBInput Devices Fixed
Details

October’s update broke USB keyboard and mouse support in the Windows Recovery Environment. If your PC had a problem and booted into WinRE, you’d see the recovery options on screen — and be completely unable to interact with them. No keyboard, no mouse, no way to select “Troubleshoot” or “Reset this PC” or anything at all. Just a recovery screen you can look at but not touch, like a museum exhibit of a functional operating system. Microsoft rushed out an emergency fix in six days, which is fast for them but an eternity when you’re staring at an unusable recovery screen.

KB5065789 Broken

IIS and localhost connections broken, DRM playback dead

IISNetworkingHTTPDRMVideo Playback Fixed
Details

The September preview update broke HTTP.sys, the kernel-mode HTTP driver that powers IIS and localhost connections. Web developers found their local development servers returning ERR_CONNECTION_RESET and ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR. Production IIS websites on affected servers went down. Autodesk Vault broke. DRM-protected content — digital TV, Blu-ray and DVD playback apps — stopped working entirely. Microsoft deployed a Known Issue Rollback for enterprise, but the permanent fix didn’t arrive until October’s Patch Tuesday. Somehow, an update managed to break both web servers and movie night simultaneously.

KB5068221 Broken

SMBv1 file sharing over NetBIOS broken

SMBNetworkingFile Sharing Unfixed
Details

This out-of-band update, released to fix Office and App-V crashes, carried forward a bug from September’s Patch Tuesday that broke SMBv1 file sharing over NetBIOS. Legacy NAS devices and older servers using SMBv1 via NetBIOS became inaccessible — shared files and folders simply vanished from the network. Microsoft’s workaround was to force SMB over TCP port 445 instead, which is essentially telling users to stop using the protocol Microsoft broke. Yes, SMBv1 is deprecated. No, that doesn’t help the countless small businesses still running decade-old NAS boxes that only speak SMBv1.

KB5065426 Broken

DRM video broken, SMBv1 file sharing dead

DRMVideo PlaybackSMBFile SharingNetworking Fixed
Details

September’s update broke DRM video playback — Blu-ray apps, DVD players, and digital TV applications all failed with copyright protection errors or black screens. The Enhanced Video Renderer couldn’t handle HDCP enforcement anymore. Meanwhile, SMBv1 file sharing stopped working entirely with repeated “System error 86” credential prompts, even with correct passwords. Legacy NAS devices and printers became inaccessible. Some machines had their network profiles silently reset to “Public,” disabling file and printer sharing. Microsoft managed to break both watching movies and accessing network files in a single update.

KB5064081 Broken

DRM playback dead, legacy printing broken, MSI repairs fail

DRMVideo PlaybackPrintingApplications Fixed
Details

The August preview update for Windows 11 24H2 broke DRM-protected content playback — digital TV, Blu-ray, and DVD apps showed copyright protection errors, black screens, and unexpected stops. The update also switched Windows printing from MSVCRT to Universal CRT, intentionally breaking print clients running anything older than Windows 10 2004. MSI application repairs failed with Error 1730 for non-admin users, affecting Office and Autodesk products. The password icon vanished from the lock screen again, making its recurring disappearance the “Where’s Waldo?” of Windows bugs. Microsoft eventually deployed a Known Issue Rollback a month later.

KB5063875 Broken

Reset this PC completely broken

System RecoveryWindows ResetUAC Fixed
Details

August’s Patch Tuesday broke Windows Recovery — the last resort for fixing a broken Windows installation. Attempting to “Reset this PC” would fail and roll back, leaving users trapped with whatever problems drove them to reset in the first place. Excessive UAC prompts appeared everywhere for good measure. Microsoft had to issue an emergency out-of-band patch KB5066189 a week later, because breaking the recovery system is the one thing you really shouldn’t do when your updates regularly require recovery.

KB5063878 Catastrophic

Recovery tools broken, SSDs vanish under load

Windows RecoverySSDStorageWSUSEnterprise Fixed
Details

August’s update broke the one thing you need most when updates break things: the recovery tools. “Reset this PC” and “Fix problems using Windows Update” both stopped working, leaving users with no self-service repair options when things went wrong. As a bonus, SSDs would disappear entirely under heavy workloads — transferring 50GB or more could make your storage drive vanish from the system. Enterprise deployments via WSUS and SCCM also failed. Microsoft broke the safety net, then broke the thing the safety net was supposed to catch you from.

KB5062660 Broken

Phantom folders, green screen restarts, Surface keyboard dead

InstallationDesktopInput DevicesFile ExplorerSystem Stability Fixed
Details

The July preview update for Windows 11 24H2 conjured phantom folders on the desktop — mysterious empty directories that appeared from nowhere. Installations stalled at 58%. Green screen restarts plagued users. Surface Pro 11 keyboards stopped working entirely, turning a laptop into a very expensive tablet. File Explorer’s Home view collapsed to showing a single lonely folder. It was the kind of update where every user encountered a different, equally baffling bug.

KB5062552 Broken

Traditional Chinese input method completely broken

Input MethodInternationalization Fixed
Details

July’s Patch Tuesday broke the Microsoft Changjie input method, rendering Traditional Chinese text input impossible on Windows 11 22H2/23H2. The spacebar stopped responding during character composition. The conversion candidate window refused to display. Users could not form or select words. For millions of Traditional Chinese users, their computers became incapable of typing in their language. The fix took two weeks to arrive in KB5062663, during which affected users had to find creative workarounds for the basic act of text input on a computer in 2025.

KB5062553 Catastrophic

Start Menu, Explorer, Taskbar, Settings all crash

Start MenuFile ExplorerTaskbarSettingsSearchXAML Fixed
Details

July’s update managed to break almost every core Windows feature simultaneously. A XAML package registration race condition caused File Explorer, Start Menu, Taskbar, Settings, and Windows Search to crash or fail to load entirely. Neowin’s headline said it best: “Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken.” The workaround was a PowerShell command to re-register XAML packages — the kind of thing you’d expect from a Linux distro, not the world’s most popular desktop OS. When your operating system needs command-line surgery to display a Start menu, something has gone deeply wrong.

KB5060829 Broken

Alt+Tab broken in games, monitors turn green

GamingDisplayAlt+Tab Fixed
Details

The June preview update broke Alt+Tab in fullscreen games — one of the most fundamental keyboard shortcuts in Windows. Switching away from a game caused resolution changes and cursor lag, making the transition between game and desktop a disorienting mess. External monitors developed a green tint, turning everything into a Matrix-themed fever dream. Windows Firewall started throwing false Event ID 2042 warnings. CJK text rendered blurry in Chromium browsers at 96 DPI. Microsoft’s advice was essentially “you can safely ignore it,” which is a bold stance on monitors turning green.

KB5063060 Catastrophic

Emergency anti-cheat fix causes boot loops and more chaos

BootInstallationBluetoothTaskbarGraphicsGaming Fixed
Details

June’s Patch Tuesday (KB5060842) broke Easy Anti-Cheat, killing online gaming. Microsoft rushed out emergency patch KB5063060 to fix it. The emergency patch introduced boot loops, installation failures, Bluetooth devices not being recognized, taskbar freezes and corruption, graphical glitches, game crashes, and Windows Explorer crashes. PCWorld’s headline said it all: “Windows 11’s emergency June update causes even more bugs and chaos.” The fix was worse than the disease, which was itself caused by a previous fix. It’s fixes all the way down.

KB5060842 Broken

Gaming crashes, Print to PDF vanishes

GamingEasy Anti-CheatPrint to PDFWindows Update Fixed
Details

June’s security update caused Windows to restart whenever launching games with Easy Anti-Cheat — primarily Fortnite, the most played game in the world. Microsoft took the unprecedented step of throttling a security update’s rollout while they scrambled a fix, which came via OOB patch the very next day. The update also completely removed Microsoft Print to PDF from the system, with attempts to re-enable it returning error 0x800f0922. Oh, and the update was shipped with the wrong timestamp in its metadata, causing organizations with update delay policies to unknowingly remain unpatched for an extra 10 days. A trifecta of incompetence.

KB5058499 Broken

Update loops forever, network installs broken

Windows UpdateInstallation Fixed
Details

The May preview update for Windows 11 24H2 achieved a perfect loop of futility. Installations stuck at 8% or 46%, consuming high CPU while accomplishing nothing, then failing and trying again ad infinitum. The WUSA standalone installer broke with ERROR_BAD_PATHNAME when deploying from network shares, crippling enterprise deployment workflows. Systems were trapped in an endless cycle of attempting to install an update that couldn’t install, burning power and patience in equal measure.

KB5058405 Catastrophic

VMs unbootable with ACPI.sys BSOD

BSODBootVirtual MachinesAzure Fixed
Details

May’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 bricked virtual machines across Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop, Citrix, and Hyper-V environments. Systems hit BSOD 0xc0000098, reporting ACPI.sys as missing or corrupt, and became completely unbootable — stuck in recovery mode with no way forward. Enterprise cloud infrastructure ground to a halt. Microsoft needed 18 days to ship an emergency out-of-band patch (KB5062170). Nearly three weeks of VMs that couldn’t boot, on the platform Microsoft wants enterprises to trust with their cloud workloads.

KB5058411 Broken

File Explorer freezes, toolbar buttons unclickable

File ExplorerTaskbarWindows Update Fixed
Details

The May update shipped with fancy new AI features for File Explorer. It also shipped with a File Explorer that freezes solid — toolbar buttons become completely unclickable, mouse and keyboard inputs randomly stop working, and the whole thing locks up tighter than a Windows license agreement. For those lucky enough to avoid the freeze, the update simply refused to install, offering a smorgasbord of error codes: 0x800f0991, 0x80070002, 0x800f081f, and more. Microsoft’s official support was, as Neowin put it, “useless.” At least the AI search works great in the File Explorer you can’t interact with.

KB5055523 Catastrophic

BSOD, inetpub chaos, Windows Hello broken

BSODBootWindows HelloIISSecurity Fixed
Details

April’s update was a masterclass in unintended consequences. Systems with Secure Launch enabled hit SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR BSODs (0x18B), requiring emergency OOB patches within three days. The update created a mysterious C:\inetpub folder on every PC — even without IIS installed — to fix a symlink vulnerability. Security researchers promptly discovered this fix introduced a new vulnerability: non-admin users could use the folder to block all future Windows updates via a symlink attack. Windows Hello facial recognition broke for anyone using a privacy shutter on their color camera while relying on the IR sensor. And WSUS couldn’t upgrade systems to 24H2 anymore. One update, four distinct disasters.

KB5055528 Broken

WSUS upgrades blocked, mystery inetpub folder created

Windows UpdateWSUSEnterprise Fixed
Details

April’s Patch Tuesday blocked enterprise WSUS upgrades to Windows 11 24H2 with error 0x80240069, leaving IT departments unable to migrate their fleets through their own update infrastructure. As a bonus, it silently created a mysterious empty C:\inetpub folder on every single Windows 11 system — Microsoft’s idea of “security hardening” for a web server directory that 99% of users have never needed. Admins who deleted the folder found it kept coming back. The WSUS blockage required either waiting for the May patch or deploying a Known Issue Rollback Group Policy, because nothing says “enterprise-ready” like needing a special policy to undo your update infrastructure breaking itself.

KB5053656 Catastrophic

BSOD SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR after install

BSODBootInstallationFile Explorer Fixed
Details

The March preview update for Windows 11 24H2 introduced a Blue Screen of Death with the delightfully specific error 0x18B SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR — the secure kernel, it turns out, was not feeling very secure. Systems would BSOD shortly after installation and reboot. Those lucky enough to avoid the blue screen still got installation failures stuck at various percentages before rolling back with “Something didn’t go as planned.” Microsoft deployed a Known Issue Rollback to automatically undo the damage, though enterprise admins needed to manually deploy a Group Policy to get even that automatic fix. The kernel error wasn’t fully resolved until KB5055627 arrived a month later.

KB5053598 Broken

Remote Desktop disconnects after 65 seconds

Remote DesktopRDPNetworking Fixed
Details

The March 2025 update introduced a very specific kind of torture: RDP sessions that work perfectly for exactly 65 seconds, then disconnect. UDP-based Remote Desktop connections from Windows 11 24H2 to Windows Server 2016 or earlier would drop like clockwork just over a minute in. IT admins managing older servers got to experience the joy of reconnecting every minute while trying to troubleshoot why their connections kept dropping. The fix took over two weeks to arrive.

KB5053602 Broken

USB printers print garbage text and network commands

PrintingUSB Fixed
Details

March’s Patch Tuesday turned USB dual-mode printers into random text generators. Instead of printing your documents, they’d spit out pages of garbage characters, raw network commands, and unintelligible data — like your printer was having a conversation with the void. Copilot also silently unpinned and uninstalled itself for some users, which honestly might have been the most user-friendly thing this update did. The printer chaos took two weeks to fix with KB5053657 on March 25th.

KB5052093 Broken

Update pulled, re-released, still broken

Windows UpdatePerformanceGaming Fixed
Details

Microsoft released KB5052093 for Windows 11 24H2, watched it fail to install for users with errors 0x800f0983 and 0x80070005, pulled it, and then re-released it — at which point it still failed to install for many users. Those who managed to get it installed were rewarded with choppy, laggy system performance and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 refusing to launch. The rare update that managed to be broken both before and after installation.

KB5051987 Broken

Camera breaks, File Explorer stops responding

CameraFile ExplorerWindows 11 24H2 Fixed
Details

February’s update decided cameras are overrated. After installing KB5051987, Windows stops recognizing that your camera is turned on, rendering video calls into a guessing game of “can they see me?” Meanwhile, File Explorer refuses to open folders — clicking Desktop, Documents, or Pictures does absolutely nothing. The sidebar arrows to expand subfolders? Also nothing. It’s like File Explorer decided to take the month off. At least the update also introduced “faulty preview animations” in the taskbar, so you have something broken to look at while your files are inaccessible.

KB5051989 Broken

USB printers print garbage, AppLocker kiosks broken

PrintingUSBOpenSSHEnterpriseKiosk Fixed
Details

February’s Patch Tuesday continued the USB printer saga — dual-mode printers kept printing random garbage text and network commands instead of actual documents, a bug that had been reported since at least January and wouldn’t be fixed until late March. AppLocker rules stopped working on multi-app kiosk configurations, breaking enterprise digital signage and shared terminals. OpenSSH still refused to start, a gift that kept giving since October 2024. Four months of a broken SSH service on a modern operating system.

KB5050092 Broken

USB printers print random garbage, OpenSSH still broken

PrintingUSBOpenSSH Fixed
Details

The January preview update for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 joined the USB printer garbage party — dual-mode printers started printing random text and network commands instead of documents. OpenSSH continued its four-month streak of refusing to start, a bug Microsoft had acknowledged back in October but apparently couldn’t prioritize fixing on the operating system used by most of the planet. The printer issue wouldn’t be resolved until late March, giving users nearly two months of wondering what their printer was trying to tell them.

KB5050094 Broken

Spinning cursor every 30 seconds, RDP freezes, File Explorer crashes

UIRemote DesktopFile ExplorerPerformanceHyper-VAudio Fixed
Details

The January preview update for Windows 11 24H2 introduced a persistent spinning cursor that appeared every 30 seconds even when the system was completely idle — a metronome of incompetence. Remote Desktop sessions froze entirely, with mouse and keyboard becoming unresponsive. File Explorer crashed and hung. Hyper-V broke during RDP sessions. Audio devices vanished from certain applications. Adobe Premiere Pro’s drag-and-drop broke on multi-monitor setups. Login performance degraded severely. It was less of an update and more of a comprehensive demonstration of how many things can break at once.

KB5050009 Broken

Update fails on Citrix systems

Windows UpdateCitrixEnterprise Fixed
Details

The January 2025 Patch Tuesday update fails to install on any system running Citrix Session Recording Agent, rolling back with the wonderfully helpful “Something didn’t go as planned. No need to worry — undoing changes.” The Citrix service locks driver files that the update needs to modify, creating a deadlock that neither Microsoft nor Citrix seemed to have tested for. The workaround? Manually stop the Citrix service before every Windows Update. Enterprise IT admins everywhere added another step to their already-joyful patching procedures.

KB5050021 Broken

Black screen after install, OpenSSH broken, Bluetooth broken

DisplayBootOpenSSHBluetooth Fixed
Details

January’s Patch Tuesday greeted Windows 11 22H2/23H2 users with black screens after installation — just a cursor on a void where your desktop used to be. OpenSSH continued its unbroken streak of being broken since October, now entering its fourth month of the sshd service silently refusing to start. Bluetooth file transfers broke, requiring a full uninstall-and-reinstall dance via DISM cleanup to restore functionality. A fitting start to the new year.

KB5048667 Catastrophic

INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD, severe performance degradation

BSODBootPerformanceGamingFile ExplorerVideo Streaming Fixed
Details

December’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 24H2 was a nightmare before Christmas. INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSODs bricked systems, with boot configuration data errors requiring Secure Boot to be temporarily disabled just to access your own computer. Installation failures cascaded with errors 0x800f081f, 0x800f0991, and 0x800f0922. Those who survived installation got significant CPU performance degradation — higher temperatures, gaming regression, and slowdowns that worsened over time. File Explorer behaved erratically when maximized. Fullscreen video streaming on Netflix and Prime Video became laggy. Microsoft’s holiday gift to its users: a slower, crashier, less functional computer.

KB5048685 Broken

Start menu dies, Wi-Fi breaks, install loops

Start MenuWi-FiWindows UpdateVDI Fixed
Details

December’s update brought a festive collection of breakage. The Start menu became completely unresponsive, particularly in VDI and Citrix environments. Wi-Fi stopped functioning entirely on some systems. The update got stuck during installation, restarting in loops. TCP resets interrupted network connectivity. Displays appeared washed out. The “Safely Remove Hardware” icon showed phantom network adapters. The workaround for the Start menu issue? A registry edit targeting StartMenuExperienceHost.exe. Merry Christmas, here’s a registry key to unwrap.

KB5046617 Broken

Update gets stuck, blocks all future updates

Windows UpdateSystem Updates Fixed
Details

November’s update continued the proud tradition of KB5044284 by also blocking all future security updates when installed via USB or CD media. The update itself would get stuck at various percentages — 6%, 35%, 40% — pick your favorite number, it’ll freeze there. Microsoft confirmed the issue and said it would be fixed in the December update. So for two months, systems installed from media were frozen in time, unable to receive security patches, like a Windows XP machine in a dentist’s office.

KB5044380 Broken

OpenSSH completely broken, service silently fails

OpenSSHNetworking Fixed
Details

Microsoft confirmed that this update broke OpenSSH. The sshd service silently refused to start — no error messages, no logging, just nothing. Every SSH connection attempt simply failed. This affected enterprise customers, IoT deployments, education systems, and anyone who relied on remote shell access to Windows machines. Microsoft’s fix? Manually adjust ACL permissions on C:\ProgramData\ssh and C:\ProgramData\ssh\logs. The bug persisted through every update from October 2024 through March 2025 — five months of broken SSH on the world’s most popular desktop operating system.

KB5044384 Broken

Task Manager stops showing tasks, widespread install failures

Task ManagerWindows Update Fixed
Details

The October preview update for Windows 11 24H2 broke Task Manager — the one tool every Windows user reaches for when something goes wrong. After installing KB5044384, Task Manager stopped displaying running tasks entirely, making process management impossible. You couldn’t see what was running, couldn’t end hung processes, couldn’t monitor resource usage. Installations failed left and right too, stalling at 90-95% with errors 0x800f0922 and 0xc015001a. Microsoft advised waiting for November’s Patch Tuesday, which is one way to handle breaking the tool people use to diagnose your broken updates.

KB5044284 Broken

Install fails, SSH broken, blocks future updates

Windows UpdateOpenSSHSystem Updates Fixed
Details

The first update for Windows 11 24H2 was a hat trick of dysfunction. First, it fails to install with error 0x800736b3, getting stuck at 40% or rolling back endlessly. Second, it breaks OpenSSH — the sshd service refuses to start with Error 1067 because Microsoft changed folder permissions that OpenSSH didn’t expect. Third, and most impressively, if you installed Windows from USB media with this update baked in, it permanently blocks all future updates from installing. Microsoft’s fix for the update that blocks updates? Install a different update. Which you can’t. Because updates are blocked.

KB5044285 Broken

OpenSSH broken on mandatory security update, network instability

OpenSSHNetworkingWi-FiWindows Update Fixed
Details

The October Patch Tuesday security update broke OpenSSH on Windows 11 22H2/23H2 — and since it was a mandatory security update, users couldn’t just skip it. The sshd service failed to start silently, killing all SSH connectivity. But that wasn’t all: Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections became unstable, desktop thumbnails and icons disappeared, and the Properties right-click context menu broke. Installation failures piled up with four different error codes. The SSH breakage wouldn’t be properly fixed for five months, making this the update that kept taking.

KB5043145 Catastrophic

BSOD reboot loop on boot

BootBSODSystem Stability Fixed
Details

The September preview update caused some PCs to enter a Blue Screen of Death reboot loop, never successfully completing the boot process. Affected systems would BSOD, restart, BSOD again, in perpetuity. The only fix was booting into Safe Mode and uninstalling the update manually — assuming you knew how to get to Safe Mode on a modern PC that boots in 3 seconds.

KB5043076 Broken

Linux dual-boot killed, Explorer crashes, UAC broken

Dual BootLinuxFile ExplorerUACEnterprise Fixed
Details

September’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 was a greatest hits compilation of breakage. Linux dual-boot systems stopped booting entirely, greeted with “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation” — Microsoft’s Secure Boot update decided that Linux wasn’t secure enough to exist. File Explorer crashed when opened from the taskbar. Run as Administrator (UAC) broke due to DLL issues, meaning you couldn’t elevate privileges to fix the other problems. Enterprise systems hit Unified Write Filter deadlocks with SCCM. SAP EasyDocuments stopped working. The workaround for the Linux issue involved disabling Secure Boot entirely, which rather defeats the purpose of a Secure Boot update.

KB5043080 Broken

Future Windows Updates permanently broken

Windows Update Fixed
Details

September’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 24H2 introduced “checkpoint cumulative updates” for Copilot+ PCs — a new servicing model that promptly broke the ability to install any future updates. Systems that had added Feature on Demand or Language Packs from local sources on top of the checkpoint update would fail all subsequent updates with “Operation is not supported” errors. The fix was to manually re-download and reinstall KB5043080 from the Microsoft Update Catalog, which really drives home the irony of Windows Update breaking Windows Update.

KB5041587 Broken

Linux dual-boot still broken, Bluetooth drops, hibernation fails

Dual BootLinuxBluetoothHibernationFile Explorer Fixed
Details

The August preview update continued the SBAT crusade against Linux dual-boot systems while adding new problems. Bluetooth devices disconnected randomly. File Explorer’s navigation pane stopped refreshing properly. Resuming from hibernation failed. Memory leaks degraded performance over time. SCCM task deadlocks hit enterprise deployments. It was the second August update to break Linux booting, at which point it was clear Microsoft’s “this won’t affect dual-boot” promise was less a commitment and more a suggestion.

KB5041585 Catastrophic

Linux dual-boot systems bricked by Secure Boot update

Secure BootGRUBDual BootLinux Fixed
Details

Microsoft pushed a Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT) update that was supposed to revoke old, vulnerable GRUB bootloaders. Instead, it bricked dual-boot Linux/Windows systems worldwide. Users who dared to run both operating systems were greeted with “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation” and an unbootable system. Microsoft had explicitly said the update “should not” affect dual-boot systems. It did.

KB5041592 Broken

Linux dual-boot broken, TCP/IP crippled

Dual BootLinuxNetworkingTCP/IPBitLocker Fixed
Details

August’s Patch Tuesday applied a Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT) policy that bricked Linux dual-boot setups across the board. Ubuntu, Fedora, and other distributions refused to boot with a “Security Policy Violation” error — Microsoft had effectively decided that your Linux partition was a security threat. Meanwhile, TCP/IP connections suffered high CPU usage and packet loss, degrading network performance system-wide. The BitLocker recovery screen boot issue from July persisted. Profile picture changes failed with error 0x80070520 — because even the simplest features aren’t safe from Patch Tuesday.

KB5040431 Broken

BitLocker recovery screen locks users out on boot

BitLockerBootTaskbarWindows Installer Fixed
Details

July’s Patch Tuesday greeted users with an unexpected BitLocker recovery screen on boot — the kind that demands a 48-character recovery key most people have never seen and certainly didn’t write down. This wasn’t a security event; the update just confused BitLocker into thinking something had changed. The issue hit across all July 2024 Patch Tuesday updates, affecting multiple Windows versions simultaneously. Windows N edition users also lost their taskbar entirely. Automation scripts broke because Windows Installer silently changed its UAC behavior. The BitLocker fix arrived a month later in August, by which point countless users had already factory reset their machines.

KB5040442 Broken

BitLocker recovery forced on boot

BitLockerBootDevice Encryption Fixed
Details

The July security update decided that users needed a surprise BitLocker recovery quiz on boot. After installing, PCs — especially Intel systems with Modern Standby — would boot straight to the BitLocker recovery key prompt, locking users out of their own machines. Hope you saved that 48-digit recovery key somewhere! Most people hadn’t, because Windows enabled Device Encryption automatically without making it obvious. Microsoft acknowledged the issue affected “some” devices. It mostly affected the ones people were trying to use.

KB5039302 Catastrophic

Taskbar and Start Menu crash loop

TaskbarStart MenuExplorer Fixed
Details

The June update introduced a delightful feature where the taskbar and Start Menu would crash and restart in an infinite loop. Windows Explorer would consume 100% CPU cycling through crash-restart sequences. Some users were left staring at a desktop with no way to launch applications other than Ctrl+Alt+Del and Task Manager. The truly premium Windows experience.

KB5039212 Catastrophic

Boot loops and BSODs on PCs with virtualization

BootBSODVirtualizationTaskbar Fixed
Details

June’s Patch Tuesday sent thousands of PCs into relentless boot loops. Systems with virtualization features enabled — which includes anyone running WSL, Hyper-V, Docker, or even just having memory integrity turned on — got caught in a BSOD cycle with stop code 0xC000021A. Machines that somehow survived the reboot gauntlet found their taskbar had disappeared or become completely unresponsive. Microsoft pulled the update sixteen days later and deployed a Known Issue Rollback, but the actual fix didn’t arrive until July’s Patch Tuesday. WebProNews called it “a routine patch, a digital nightmare.”

KB5037771 Broken

VPN connections broken, Start Menu unresponsive

VPNNetworkingStart MenuWindows SearchFile Explorer Fixed
Details

May’s Patch Tuesday continued the VPN connectivity saga that had plagued Windows 11 for months. VPN connections dropped or refused to establish. The Start Menu and Windows Search stopped responding entirely. Explorer.exe crashed on reboot. Installation stalled at 70%. For remote workers who depended on VPN access, this mandatory security update effectively cut them off from their workplace — the digital equivalent of changing the locks while everyone’s at lunch.

KB5036893 Broken

VPN connections broken system-wide

VPNNetworkingRemote Access Fixed
Details

The April 2024 update broke VPN connections across multiple protocols including SSTP, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP. Enterprise users who rely on VPN for remote work were suddenly unable to connect to their corporate networks. Microsoft acknowledged the issue affected “some” users — it was, in fact, most of them. The fix took three weeks, during which time “just come into the office” was the official workaround.

KB5036980 Broken

VPN broken, Explorer crashes, external monitors vanish

VPNFile ExplorerDisplayPerformance Fixed
Details

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.

KB5035942 Catastrophic

BSODs, Automatic Repair loops, audio devices dead

BSODBootAudioDisplay Fixed
Details

The “Moment 5” preview update brought a moment of horror. BSODs sent systems into Automatic Repair loops — the repair itself failing, leaving users in an endless cycle of crash, attempt repair, fail, crash again. Sound devices stopped working entirely: USB audio, microphones, speakers — all silent. A black desktop screen greeted those who avoided the BSOD. Installation failures were widespread. Being an optional preview update, the solution was to uninstall it, but that required actually being able to boot first, which was the one thing the update prevented.

KB5035853 Catastrophic

Multiple BSOD types, Lenovo AMD BitLocker recovery loops

BSODBootPerformanceBitLockerTaskbar Fixed
Details

March’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 delivered a variety pack of Blue Screens: “Thread Stuck in Device Driver,” “DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION,” and “Memory Management” — pick your favorite. Boot times slowed dramatically. System performance degraded across the board. The taskbar stopped working. Lenovo AMD systems entered BitLocker recovery loops, forcing users to dig up recovery keys just to access their own computers. Microsoft never officially acknowledged the BSODs, leaving users to discover through trial and error that uninstalling the update and pausing future updates was their only recourse.

KB5035855 Catastrophic

Domain Controller memory leak crashes enterprises

Active DirectoryDomain ControllersLSASSWindows Server Fixed
Details

March’s server update introduced a memory leak in LSASS — the process responsible for all authentication on Windows domain controllers. As the DC serviced Kerberos requests, LSASS memory consumption grew without limit until the server exhausted all RAM, hung, and crashed. In production environments running hundreds of domain controllers, this was a cascading disaster. Microsoft needed emergency out-of-band patches ten days later. It’s reassuring to know that the process underpinning every Windows domain login can be turned into a memory bomb by a routine security update.

KB5034848 Broken

Microsoft tells users not to install their own update

Windows UpdateInstallation Fixed
Details

The February preview update failed to install so spectacularly that Microsoft officially told users not to install it. Installations failed with errors 0x800f0922, 0x800f0982, and 0x80070002, rolling back at 96% completion — tantalizingly close to success before crashing back to square one. The workaround was to manually delete a hidden C:\$WinREAgent folder, because of course the fix for a broken Windows update is to dig around in hidden system directories. When the company that made the update publicly advises against installing the update, you know quality assurance has left the building.

KB5034765 Broken

Taskbar vanishes, File Explorer crashes, install fails

TaskbarFile ExplorerWindows Update Fixed
Details

The February Patch Tuesday update delivered a three-course meal of misery. First course: your taskbar disappears, leaving a blank void where your app icons used to be. Second course: File Explorer crashes whenever it feels like it. Third course: the update itself fails to install at 96% with error 0x800F0922, because a hidden C:\$WinREAgent folder left behind by a previous botched update blocks installation. The fix was to manually delete a hidden system folder. Peak Windows.

KB5034123 Broken

Widespread install failures, audio stuttering while gaming

Windows UpdateAudioWi-Fi Fixed
Details

January 2024’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 refused to install with a trio of errors: 0x800f081f, 0x80188309, and 0x8007000d. Users who managed to force it through were rewarded with audio stuttering during gaming and streaming — the sound crackling and cutting out mid-game. Wi-Fi adapter connectivity became unreliable. A security update that couldn’t install, and when it did, made your computer worse at the two things people actually enjoy doing with it.

KB5034441 Annoyance

WinRE BitLocker patch fails to install

BitLockerWindows RecoveryWindows Update Fixed
Details

Microsoft released a WinRE update to patch CVE-2024-20666, a BitLocker security bypass vulnerability. The update promptly failed to install on millions of PCs with error 0x80070643, because the Windows Recovery partition didn’t have enough free space — a partition that Windows itself created and sized. Microsoft’s official guidance? Manually resize your recovery partition using diskpart. Yes, really. They shipped a security fix that requires command-line partition surgery to install, on an OS designed for people who can’t find the Control Panel.

KB5033375 Catastrophic

Enterprise Wi-Fi killed at universities

Wi-Fi802.1xWPA2-EnterpriseNetworking Fixed
Details

December’s update killed Wi-Fi on enterprise and education networks using 802.1x authentication (WPA2-Enterprise/WPA3-Enterprise). Universities were hit hardest — entire campus wireless networks became unusable for students and staff overnight. Home networks using WPA2-Personal were fine, so Microsoft initially didn’t understand the scope. The bug was in Qualcomm 802.11r Wi-Fi module handling and EAP authentication paths. Microsoft deployed a Known Issue Rollback eight days later. Happy finals week, everyone.

KB5032190 Broken

Install fails block zero-day fixes, Explorer won't open

Windows UpdateFile ExplorerSecurity Fixed
Details

November’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2/23H2 failed to install at 30-37% with a rotating cast of errors: 0x80070002, 0x800F0922, and 0x800f081f. This was particularly dangerous because the update contained fixes for three actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities — meaning the install failures left systems exposed to known attacks. Users who did manage to install it found File Explorer refused to open. So you were either unpatched against active threats, or patched but unable to browse your own files. Choose your adventure.

KB5031354 Broken

File Explorer crashes, Starfield unplayable, VMs won't start

File ExplorerGamingGPUVirtual Machines Fixed
Details

October’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 crashed File Explorer on launch — the most frequently used application in Windows. Starfield and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 crashed to desktop. AMD GPU profiles and fan curves reset themselves every reboot, forcing gamers to reconfigure their graphics settings daily. Virtual machines with Secure Boot wouldn’t start. Installation failures piled up. The update managed to simultaneously ruin productivity (Explorer), gaming (Starfield), and development (VMs) — a trifecta of misery covering essentially every computer use case.

KB5030310 Broken

Black screen on login, search box shows letter C

BootDisplayWindows SearchFile ExplorerDesktop Fixed
Details

The “Moment 4” update greeted users with a black screen on login — explorer.exe simply refused to start, leaving a blank void where a desktop should be. The search box, in a surreal twist, rendered itself as just the letter “C” in the taskbar. File Explorer became sluggish with excessive memory consumption. AMD driver profiles reset on every reboot. Desktop icons stopped responding to clicks. The update that was supposed to bring exciting new features to Windows 11 instead brought an existential void and a search box that could only express a single letter of the alphabet.

KB5030219 Broken

Start menu dead, Explorer frozen, .NET apps broken

Start MenuFile ExplorerSearch.NET FrameworkGaming Fixed
Details

September’s update managed to break the three things you need most: Start menu, File Explorer, and Search. All three became completely unresponsive. As an encore, the update silently disabled .NET 3.5 Framework, breaking every legacy business application that depended on it. SQL applications crashed on both client and server. Gamers got TDR errors and blue screens. The update contained “24 fixes” according to the changelog — it just also contained about 24 new bugs to go with them.

KB5029351 Catastrophic

UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR BSOD on MSI motherboards

BootBSODMSI MotherboardsIntel Fixed
Details

This preview update decided that Intel 12th and 13th Gen CPUs on MSI 600/700 series motherboards were “unsupported processors.” Immediately after installing, systems hit an UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR BSOD on boot — no login screen, no Safe Mode option, just a blue screen declaring your processor unsupported. On hardware that was, of course, fully supported. MSI had to publish a public warning telling users not to install the update. The conflict was between Windows’ CPU verification and Intel microcode that MSI had embedded in recent BIOS updates. Microsoft blamed the OEM. The OEM blamed Microsoft. Users blamed both.

KB5029263 Broken

Explorer freeze loop, network adapters vanish, Defender broken

File ExplorerNetworkingRemote DesktopVPNWindows Defender Fixed
Details

August’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 turned explorer.exe into a freeze-and-crash loop. Network adapters stopped being recognized, cutting off internet access entirely. Remote Desktop disconnected randomly. VPN connections failed. Microsoft Defender — the built-in security software — broke. Installation stalled at 96%. The update managed to disable both your ability to browse files locally and connect to anything remotely, while also disabling your antivirus. A comprehensive demonstration of how to make a computer both useless and vulnerable in one step.

KB5028254 Broken

Screen-flash loop makes sign-in impossible

DisplayLoginSystem Stability Fixed
Details

The July preview update introduced a repeating screen-flash loop at the Windows sign-in screen. The display would flash continuously, rendering the system completely inaccessible through normal means. Users couldn’t type their password, couldn’t click anything, couldn’t do anything but watch their screen strobe. The only escape was Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reach Task Manager — assuming you could time the keyboard shortcut between flashes. A sign-in screen that actively prevents signing in is a bold design choice.

KB5028166 Catastrophic

Domain trust broken, Synology NAS severed

Active DirectoryDomain AuthenticationSynologySambaNetworking Fixed
Details

July’s update broke the trust relationship between domain-joined workstations and their domain controllers. Login attempts — both local and RDP — failed with “The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain could not be established.” Synology NAS devices running Directory Server were also severed, forcing Synology to release an emergency patch. Samba domain controllers on Linux were broken too. Microsoft managed to simultaneously break authentication with their own Active Directory, with Synology’s directory service, AND with Linux Samba domains. An equal-opportunity destroyer.

KB5028182 Broken

Explorer.exe crash loop every few seconds

File ExplorerShell Fixed
Details

July’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 21H2 turned explorer.exe into a perpetual crash-and-restart loop. The Windows shell would crash, the desktop and taskbar would vanish, explorer.exe would restart, and then crash again — every few seconds, indefinitely. Systems with ExplorerPatcher or StartAllBack were particularly hit. The computer remained technically “running” in the same way a car spinning its wheels in mud is technically “driving.” StartAllBack pushed a compatibility fix before Microsoft did.

KB5028185 Catastrophic

BSODs, SSDs vanish from system, 4-hour install stalls

BSODStorageSSDInstallationDisplayNetworking Fixed
Details

July’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 was a masterclass in how many things one update can destroy. BSODs crashed systems with automatic restarts. SSDs — notably Western Digital SN770 drives — spiked to 100% usage and then vanished entirely from device listings, as if the storage had ceased to exist. Installation stalled for 4+ hours. Displays flickered above 60Hz refresh rates. Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity dropped. Azure AD authentication failed under Citrix VDI. Microsoft officially acknowledged only a cosmetic BitLocker MDM reporting bug. The SSDs disappearing from existence were apparently not cosmetic enough to warrant acknowledgment.

KB5027231 Broken

Chrome broken for all Malwarebytes users

Google ChromeMalwarebytesWeb Browsing Fixed
Details

June’s update changed Windows exploit protection in a way that made Malwarebytes’ anti-exploit module think Chrome was malicious. Chrome processes would run in the background, but the browser window never appeared. Given that Malwarebytes has millions of users and Chrome has about 65% browser market share, this was a significant number of people who suddenly couldn’t browse the web. Trying to uninstall the update via WSUS produced a “catastrophic error.” The world’s most popular browser, broken by the world’s most popular antivirus, caused by the world’s most popular operating system’s update.

KB5026368 Broken

Explorer crash loops, 32-bit apps can't save files

File Explorer32-bit AppsMicrosoft Office Fixed
Details

May’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 21H2 crashed explorer.exe into an endless loop for users with shell customization apps. But the subtler and arguably worse bug was that 32-bit large-address-aware applications had intermittent file save and copy failures. Office 32-bit showed “Document not saved” errors — the kind of silent data loss that users might not notice until they try to reopen their work. Your files looked like they saved. They didn’t. Microsoft quietly documented the issue in the support article while users discovered it the hard way.

KB5026372 Broken

VPN speeds drop to zero

VPNL2TP/IPsecNetworkingWindows Security Fixed
Details

May’s update didn’t just slow down VPN connections — it obliterated them. L2TP/IPsec VPN speeds dropped from 16 MB/s to literally zero. Connection times ballooned from seconds to 30 seconds, when they connected at all. SFTP over VPN became completely unusable. Businesses relying on VPN for their entire remote workforce watched productivity evaporate. The Windows Security app also started crashing with “grey and black boxes” instead of its UI, because apparently Microsoft’s own security app couldn’t survive Microsoft’s own update.

KB5025239 Broken

SSD performance tanks, Explorer crashes, desktop icons die

PerformanceSSDFile ExplorerDesktopTaskbar Fixed
Details

April’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 degraded SSD performance and increased boot times — on the storage technology specifically designed for speed. Explorer.exe crashed. Windows Security UI displayed incorrect TPM 2.0 and LSA information, causing security-conscious users to panic about their hardware status. Desktop icons became unresponsive or disappeared entirely. The taskbar’s auto-hide feature malfunctioned. Rare BSODs rounded out the experience. An update that made your fast storage slow, your desktop unclickable, and your security status unreliable.

KB5023706 Broken

SSD speeds tank, BSODs, Bluetooth breaks

StorageSSDSMBBluetoothBSOD Fixed
Details

The March 2023 update discovered a creative new way to slow down your PC: cripple your SSD. NVMe drives that should read at 7000 MB/s were reduced to around 1000 MB/s when copying files over SMB. Microsoft managed to make cutting-edge storage hardware perform like it was from 2015. As a bonus, the update also delivered Blue Screens of Death, broken Bluetooth connectivity, and install failures with a variety of error codes. Third-party tools like Start11 and ExplorerPatcher were also broken, because why stop at first-party damage?

KB5022913 Catastrophic

Explorer crash loop prevents boot to desktop

BootFile ExplorerShell Fixed
Details

The “Moment 2” feature update caused explorer.exe to crash-loop on startup, preventing systems from ever reaching the desktop. The shell would start, crash, restart, crash — an infinite loop that left users staring at a blank screen forever. Systems running UI customization tools like ExplorerPatcher, StartAllBack, or Start11 were the primary victims. Microsoft warned about the issue but shipped the update anyway, leaving users to discover their PCs wouldn’t boot to a usable state after a routine Windows Update.

KB5022842 Catastrophic

Secure Boot update bricks VMware VMs and bare metal servers

Secure BootVMwareWindows ServerVirtual Machines Fixed
Details

February’s update shipped a new EFI bootloader signature that VMware ESXi 6.7 and 7.0 hosts rejected at the UEFI Secure Boot level. Windows Server 2022 VMs simply would not boot — they couldn’t find a bootable OS. Bare metal servers were also affected. The truly elegant part: uninstalling the KB didn’t fix it, because the new bootloader signature was already written. The only options were disabling Secure Boot entirely or upgrading ESXi. VMware had to rush out an emergency ESXi update. Microsoft had managed to brick VMs that couldn’t be un-bricked by removing the update.

KB5022845 Broken

Apps hang on launch, WSUS broken, SMB copies crawl

ApplicationsWSUSSMB32-bit Apps Fixed
Details

February’s Patch Tuesday made applications hang on startup when Windows Defender was disabled — punishing users for not using Microsoft’s security product. WSUS distribution failed, leaving enterprise IT unable to deploy updates. 32-bit app file operations broke. SMB network file copies slowed to a crawl. The update effectively penalized both individual users (app hangs) and enterprises (WSUS failure, slow network copies) simultaneously, ensuring nobody was spared.

KB5022303 Catastrophic

BSOD 0xc000021a, update meant to fix BSODs causes BSODs

BSODBootWindows Update Fixed
Details

January’s Patch Tuesday delivered BSODs with stop code 0xc000021a after reboot — the irony being that this update was partially meant to fix a BSOD issue from December. Installation failures stacked up with errors 0x800f0831 and 0x800f0988. The update designed to stop your computer from crashing instead made your computer crash, which is the Windows Update equivalent of calling a plumber who floods your house. Microsoft needed until February to ship a proper fix.

KB5021233 Catastrophic

hidparse.sys BSOD bricks PCs on boot

BootBSODHID Drivers Fixed
Details

Happy holidays! December’s update left a copy of hidparse.sys in the wrong directory, causing a version mismatch between System32 and System32\drivers. Windows signature validation failed on boot, producing a 0xc000021a Blue Screen of Death. The system was completely unbootable. Microsoft’s fix? Boot into the Windows Recovery Environment and manually copy the file with xcopy. No automated patch. No OOB update. Just a manual xcopy command that requires getting into WinRE on a system that won’t boot. Merry Christmas from Microsoft.

KB5021234 Broken

AMD freezing hits 21H2 too, installs fail at 97%

System StabilityAMDInstallationStart Menu Fixed
Details

The Windows 11 21H2 version of December’s Patch Tuesday carried the same AMD Ryzen random freezing issue as KB5021255. Systems would lock up for minutes at a time without warning. Installation failures hit at 97-100% completion. The Start menu broke with third-party customization apps. Microsoft achieved impressive consistency: the same AMD-specific bug shipped across both supported Windows 11 versions on the same day, doubling the blast radius.

KB5021255 Broken

AMD Ryzen CPUs randomly freeze for minutes

System StabilityAMDInstallationTask Manager Fixed
Details

December’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 caused AMD Ryzen CPUs to randomly freeze for minutes at a time — the system would lock up completely, unresponsive to any input, before eventually recovering as if nothing happened. Installation failed at 99% with error 0x800f081f, taunting users with near-completion before crashing. Task Manager’s color rendering broke, making CPU/memory graphs unreadable. AMD users, already accustomed to being second-class citizens in the Windows ecosystem, got a special holiday gift of random system paralysis.

KB5019959 Catastrophic

Kerberos authentication destroyed on domain controllers

KerberosActive DirectoryRDPSMBEnterprise Fixed
Details

For the second year in a row, Microsoft’s November update broke Kerberos on domain controllers. This time, any account with AES 256-bit or AES 128-bit encryption flags set in Active Directory couldn’t authenticate. Domain user sign-in failed. AD FS authentication failed. Group Managed Service Accounts for IIS failed. RDP for domain users failed. File share access failed. Every single supported Windows Server version was affected simultaneously. Emergency OOB patches took ten days to arrive. Nothing says “quality assurance” like breaking enterprise authentication the exact same way two Novembers in a row.

KB5019961 Catastrophic

Kerberos broken on 21H2, domain authentication fails

AuthenticationKerberosActive DirectoryNetworking Fixed
Details

The Windows 11 21H2 version of November’s Patch Tuesday carried the same Kerberos authentication catastrophe as its 22H2 sibling KB5019980. Domain sign-ins failed. Direct Access connections broke. ODBC database connections stopped working. Microsoft had managed to break the same critical authentication infrastructure across multiple Windows versions simultaneously, ensuring that no enterprise was safe regardless of which supported version they ran. The emergency patch took nine days.

KB5019980 Catastrophic

Kerberos authentication destroyed, entire domains down

AuthenticationKerberosActive DirectoryRemote DesktopFile Sharing Fixed
Details

November’s Patch Tuesday broke Kerberos authentication on domain controllers — the backbone of Windows enterprise authentication. Domain sign-ins failed. Group Managed Service Accounts stopped working. Active Directory Federation Services went down. Remote Desktop connections refused. File sharing broke. Entire enterprise domains became effectively unusable overnight. Kerberos is the authentication protocol that everything in a Windows enterprise depends on, and Microsoft broke it in a security update. The emergency fix KB5021656 arrived nine days later. Nine days of enterprises unable to authenticate their users.

KB5018410 Broken

TLS/SSL handshakes break across all Windows

TLSSSLHTTPSCitrixNetworking Fixed
Details

October’s update broke TLS and SSL across every supported Windows version simultaneously. Encrypted connections would fail when receiving a record followed by a partial record smaller than 5 bytes. Citrix clients couldn’t talk to NetScalers. Enterprise HTTPS applications dropped connections. Every single actively supported Windows release was affected — that’s some impressive regression coverage. Microsoft needed emergency OOB patches within a week to restore the ability to do HTTPS, which in 2022 was approximately all web traffic.

KB5018427 Broken

SMB file copies 40% slower

SMBNetworkingFile CopyEnterprise Fixed
Details

October’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 22H2 introduced up to a 40% throughput loss when copying large files over SMB network shares. Enterprise provisioning packages also broke. The SMB performance regression wouldn’t be fixed until February 2023 — over four months of degraded network file transfers. Microsoft “finally fixes” was BleepingComputer’s headline when the fix arrived, emphasis on “finally.” Four months to fix making file copies slower is a pace that would make the file copies themselves look fast.

KB5017383 Broken

Preview update accidentally pushed to WSUS, expires security updates

WSUSEnterpriseWindows Update Fixed
Details

Microsoft accidentally published a preview update to WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), the enterprise update management system. Organizations with auto-approve or auto-decline rules had their security update deployment policies corrupted — critical security patches were expired before they could be deployed. Preview updates are optional and never supposed to reach WSUS. Microsoft’s quality control failed at the distribution level: the update itself might have been fine, but shipping it through the wrong channel broke enterprise security patching workflows across organizations worldwide.

KB5012170 Broken

Secure Boot update triggers BitLocker lockout

BitLockerSecure BootUEFIBoot Fixed
Details

Microsoft pushed a Secure Boot DBX update to block vulnerable UEFI bootloaders. The update modified the boot environment just enough to make BitLocker think someone was tampering with the system, demanding the recovery key on next boot. The same recovery key that most users didn’t know existed, let alone saved. Microsoft’s advice to prevent the issue: manually suspend BitLocker via command line before installing the update. Because average users definitely know what manage-bde -protectors -disable %systemdrive% -rebootcount 2 means.

KB5016629 Broken

Install failures, system freezing, reboot loops

InstallationSystem StabilityXPS Viewer Fixed
Details

August’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 21H2 failed to install with error 0x80073701 for many users. Those who forced it through experienced system freezing and reboot loops. XPS Viewer broke. IE mode tabs became unresponsive in Edge. The update embodied the classic Windows Update dilemma: not installing it leaves you unpatched, but installing it might make your computer unusable. Either way, you lose.

KB5015882 Broken

Start menu completely non-functional

Start Menu Fixed
Details

The July preview update broke the Start menu completely. Clicking the Start button did nothing. Pressing the Windows key did nothing. The most prominent UI element in Windows — the one with the operating system’s name on it — simply stopped responding. Microsoft deployed an emergency server-side fix within 24 hours, which is unusually fast for them, perhaps because “the Start button doesn’t work” is the one bug even a Microsoft executive would notice during their morning coffee.

KB5015814 Broken

Start menu broken, .NET apps crash, boot loops

Start Menu.NETBootXPS Viewer Fixed
Details

July’s Patch Tuesday broke the Start menu — again. It also crashed .NET Framework 3.5 applications, which includes a surprisingly large number of business applications. Boot loops hit some users. XPS Viewer broke. IE mode tabs died. The Start menu breakage would persist through the preview update KB5015882 that followed, making July 2022 the month where Microsoft spent three weeks unable to make the Start button work. PCGamer’s coverage was simply titled “Windows 11 security patch problems,” which at that point was barely even news anymore.

KB5014697 Broken

Wi-Fi hotspot breaks, Hyper-V won't launch

Wi-FiHyper-VAzure ADNetworking Fixed
Details

June 2022’s update went after multiple targets at once. Wi-Fi hotspot stopped working — connecting a client device would kill the host’s internet connection entirely. Hyper-V on Windows 11 threw snap-in errors and refused to launch. Azure AD sign-in broke on ARM devices. And on the server side, KB5014692 destroyed RDP, RRAS, and VPN connectivity — servers would work for about five minutes after boot before losing all network connectivity. Remote administrators couldn’t remote in to fix the remote access that was broken. Beautiful.

KB5014019 Broken

.NET 3.5 apps broken, Trend Micro stops scanning

.NETApplicationsAntivirus Fixed
Details

The May preview update continued the .NET Framework 3.5 application massacre — apps that depended on the framework simply refused to open. Trend Micro antivirus scans failed, leaving users who paid for third-party security software unprotected. SteelSeries GG, the gaming peripheral software, broke. Installation failures were common. Microsoft had been shipping .NET 3.5-breaking updates for months by this point, apparently unable to test against a framework they built and shipped with the operating system.

KB5013943 Broken

Apps crash with 0xc0000135, Sophos causes BSODs

.NET FrameworkApplicationsBSOD Fixed
Details

May’s mandatory security update silently disabled .NET 3.5 Framework, causing a cascade of application launch failures with error 0xc0000135. ProtonVPN, PowerShell, Event Viewer, KeePass, Visual Studio, Discord, ShareX, and Teams all refused to open. As a delightful bonus, machines running Sophos Home antivirus got BSODs from the hmpalert.sys driver. A security update that breaks your VPN, your password manager, your IDE, your chat app, AND your antivirus — that’s efficiency.

KB5012643 Broken

.NET 3.5 apps crash, Safe Mode display flickering

.NETSafe ModeDisplay Fixed
Details

The April preview update broke .NET Framework 3.5 applications — a theme that would repeat for months to come. Safe Mode, the diagnostic mode you boot into when Windows is broken, developed display flickering and explorer.exe instability. So when the update broke your apps, and you tried to boot into Safe Mode to fix it, Safe Mode was also broken. Some users encountered BSODs during installation. Microsoft had managed to break both the normal operating mode and the emergency diagnostic mode in the same update.

KB5012592 Broken

Browsers crash, system-wide stuttering, Wi-Fi drops

BrowsersPerformanceWi-FiTaskbar Fixed
Details

April’s Patch Tuesday made browsers crash or lose internet access with error 0xc0000022. System-wide stuttering affected mouse movement, UI animations, and video playback — the entire computer felt like it was running through molasses. Wi-Fi connections dropped. The taskbar misbehaved. Installation failed for many users. In an era where computing happens primarily in a web browser, shipping an update that crashes browsers is roughly equivalent to bricking the computer for most users’ purposes.

KB5009543 Broken

L2TP VPN connections killed

VPNL2TPIPsecRemote Access Fixed
Details

January 2022’s Patch Tuesday was a double whammy. While KB5009557 was boot-looping domain controllers (see that entry), KB5009543 was simultaneously killing L2TP VPN connections across Windows 10 and 11. Every L2TP/IPsec connection attempt failed with “the security layer encountered a processing error.” Cisco Meraki, SonicWall, Ubiquiti, and WatchGuard VPN appliances were all affected. Remote workers got to explain to their bosses why they couldn’t connect to the corporate network. Microsoft needed a week to ship emergency fixes.

KB5009557 Catastrophic

Domain Controllers enter infinite boot loops

Active DirectoryDomain ControllersHyper-VWindows Server Fixed
Details

Happy New Year from Microsoft! The January 2022 Patch Tuesday update sent Active Directory Domain Controllers into endless reboot loops. LSASS.exe — the process responsible for authentication in every Windows domain — would crash with error 0xc0000005, taking the entire server down with it and restarting every few minutes. Hyper-V was also broken for good measure. This affected the backbone of virtually every enterprise Windows network. Microsoft pulled the updates and rushed out emergency fixes a week later, but not before IT departments worldwide had a very exciting start to the year.

KB5009566 Catastrophic

L2TP VPN destroyed, domain controllers restart, VMs won't start

VPNL2TPIPSECDomain ControllersHyper-VReFS Fixed
Details

The first Patch Tuesday of 2022 set the tone for the year. L2TP VPN connections broke completely. IPSEC tunnels failed. Domain Controllers restarted unexpectedly, taking entire enterprise networks offline. Hyper-V virtual machines refused to start. ReFS media became unmountable. HDR displays broke. In one update, Microsoft knocked out VPN access, enterprise authentication, virtualization, and storage — essentially every infrastructure component a business might depend on. The emergency fix arrived six days later, during which time remote workers couldn’t VPN in and servers rebooted themselves unpredictably.

KB5008215 Broken

Cloud apps stop auto-starting, Search broken, high CPU

Cloud StorageWindows SearchPerformance Fixed
Details

December’s Patch Tuesday silently killed cloud service startup apps. OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud sync applications stopped auto-starting and disappeared from the Settings startup list entirely. Users didn’t notice until their files stopped syncing, potentially losing work. Windows Search broke. CPU usage spiked. Installation failed for many. The cloud sync issue was particularly insidious because it was silent — no error messages, no notifications, just your files quietly not syncing to the cloud while you assumed everything was fine.

KB5007186 Catastrophic

Kerberos SSO authentication broken enterprise-wide

KerberosActive DirectorySSOAzure ADEnterprise Fixed
Details

November’s update broke Kerberos S4U2self authentication on every domain controller that installed it, silently killing single sign-on across entire enterprises. Azure AD Application Proxy, Web Application Proxy, and any service using Kerberos Constrained Delegation stopped authenticating users. Employees just… couldn’t sign into things. Microsoft rushed out emergency OOB updates five days later, but they weren’t available through WSUS — admins had to manually import them. Because when your authentication infrastructure is down, what you really want is more manual steps.

KB5006674 Broken

Network printing destroyed on first-ever Win 11 update

PrintingNetworking Fixed
Details

The very first cumulative update for Windows 11 broke network printing. Shared printers failed with errors 0x000006e4, 0x0000007c, and 0x00000709 — an impressive trio of error codes for what should be a basic network operation. This was part of the ongoing PrintNightmare saga, where Microsoft’s attempts to patch a print spooler vulnerability kept breaking printing itself. The fix arrived nine days later with KB5006746. Windows 11 was barely a week old when its first update proved that the tradition of Patch Tuesday breaking things would continue uninterrupted on the new operating system.