March Windows Update chaos

Tech Talk Windows
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Just a quick heads up.

We had a bunch of PCs start crashing when they try to print this week. We tried a lot of things, in the end we switched to XPS printer drivers, from the native PCL/KXPDL drivers and the crashes disappeared.

Now The Register is reporting that it is caused by updates KB5000802 and KB5000808. The most affected brands seem to be Kyocera and Ricoh. Our HP and Canon printers are still printing okay. Luckily this only affected a small test group of users, as we roll it out to a test group in WSUS first, then after a couple of weeks with no problems, we roll it out to the wider community (zero-days excepted).

If you are having problems, try either rolling back the 2 affected patches or try switching to an XPS driver for your printer(s), if one is available.

(I also posted this over at Thurrott.com)

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We have had that problem too with our machines. Had to roll back the windows update. Just to be able to print.

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Unclear if Microsoft is to blame, or if it is poorly written 3rd party printer drivers. Driving printers is apparently harder than self-driving cars. :laughing:

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I’ve had a half dozen users crashing. The Uninstall from a command prompt works.

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I keep an eye on https://www.askwoody.com/ for this reason. The important posts for me are “Time to pause updates” - because Patch Tuesday is due; “Time to apply this month’s updates” - because the worst issues caused by the patches are fixed; and “Time to squirrel away a copy of the OS” - because the current ISO downloadable from microsoft.com is going to be replaced by a new version soon.
Edit: “@AskWoody” on Twitter is a good place to get those notifications without having to check the web site.

I have started using their “TargetReleaseVersion” registry patches to block OS version updates until I’m happy there’s no adverse effects.

I also use Windows Update Blocker to completely stop updates until I’m ready to accept them. Windows Update Blocker v1.6
Download link is right at the bottom of the page; I don’t bother with any of the tailoring mentioned on the page, but just run it in its default state. I’ve confirmed that it doesn’t block Defender updates. Have set it up in Task Scheduler to start the UI when the machine starts so its current state is visible.

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Microsoft has announced a workaround for the BSOD:

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Further update on this: An out of band optional update meant to drive a fix:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/march-15-2021-kb5001567-os-builds-19041-868-and-19042-868-out-of-band-6e0844a2-7551-4b2d-9c4b-4274a5949bf3

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And guess what, and update to the optional update :dizzy:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/march-18-2021-kb5001649-os-builds-19041-870-and-19042-870-out-of-band-ebbe0617-3a63-467a-aaaa-2a4c68a6de33

If it will install, that is:
PHolder2021Mar19_UpdateToTheUpdateThatWontUpdate

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Bleeping Computer says MS has halted the rollout of the update above that I had trouble installing. However, the irony is I Googled the KB number again because it was busily installing on the PC that produced that image above. (Now wanting to reboot to finish the install.) So I don’t even know what’s going on any more.