Microsoft Issues Emergency Windows Fix After Patch Tuesday Chaos

While the latest wave of Patch Tuesday security updates for Windows 11 once again broke Microsoft's previous best record for the most security patches in one update, those 974 fixes still broke some stuff. The good news is that Microsoft has already released an out-of-band hotfix for affected users.

Not only will this hotfix patch be included with the original Patch Tuesday fixes for future updates, but users stuck on the faulty update need only run Windows Update. Enterprise customers can even receive it automatically, depending on how they've configured Windows Update for Business. Support for this fix is broad across Windows 11 versions 26H1, 25H2, and 24H2, as well as Windows 10 version 22H2 (ESU.)

While Microsoft does have impressively broad support for this and other Windows updates, a separate simultaneous notice reminds both Windows 10 LTSB 2016 and Windows 11 version 24H2 users that their versions reach end of life on October 13th. Microsoft prompts those using Windows 10 LTSB 2016 to switch over to LTSC 2024 and, if you're using Windows 11 version 24H2, to bump up to version 25H2.

But with the most essential information out of the way, what issues does this patch actually fix? After all, there's no need to rush an update if your system isn't actually experiencing the issues the update is meant to fix.

The likelihood of unneeded patches introducing new problems is low, but never zero. But if you're one of the users who was experiencing USB 1.0 audio devices failing, Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hitching, or even host folder shares being unavailable in Linux VMs, we advise applying this update ASAP. 

For the rest of you, especially if you're on last week's update already and aren't experiencing the issues laid out above, you needn't worry about updating for a non-essential fix. Business users have more cause for concern, though: with use cases like legacy USB sound hardware, Linux VMs, and RDS being bugged without this patch, their workflows are likely to be impacted.