Microsoft Forced to Issue Emergency Out-of-Band Windows Update (windowscentral.com) 75
The senior editor at the blog Windows Central decries two serious Windows issues "that were not spotted by Microsoft during testing, and are so severe that the company has now issued an emergency fix to address the problems."
Microsoft's first update for Windows 11 in 2026 has already caused two major issues that saw users unable to fully shutdown their PCs or sign-in into a device when using Remote Desktop... Being unable to shut down your PC due to a recent OS update is a huge oversight on Microsoft's part, but this is the latest in a long list of updates over the last year to cause a major issue like this... Other issues that have cropped up in Windows 11 in the last year include a bug that caused Task Manager to fail to close when the user exited the application, causing system resources to lock up after a prolonged period of time if the user had opened and closed Task Manager multiple times in a session.
Another update caused saw File Explorer flashbang users with a white screen when opening it in dark mode, which appeared in an update that was supposed to improve dark mode on Windows 11...
For whatever reason, the Windows Insider Program doesn't appear to be working anymore, as severe bugs are somehow making it into shipping versions of the OS.
"The out of band updates, KB5077744 and KB5077797, are available now via Windows Update and is rolling out to everybody," they write. "Once installed, your PC should go back to being able to shut down successfully, and signing-in via Remote Desktop should work again."
Microsoft has also officially acknowledged a third bug which crashes Outlook Classic when using POP accounts, according to the blog Windows Latest, which adds that that bug has not yet been fixed.
They've also identified other minor bugs, including "a black screen problem in Windows 11 KB5074109... either due to the update itself or some compatibility issues with GPU drivers." After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back. I can't pinpoint any specific configuration, but I can confirm the black screen issue has been observed on a small subset of PCs with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back.
For whatever reason, the Windows Insider Program doesn't appear to be working anymore, as severe bugs are somehow making it into shipping versions of the OS.
"The out of band updates, KB5077744 and KB5077797, are available now via Windows Update and is rolling out to everybody," they write. "Once installed, your PC should go back to being able to shut down successfully, and signing-in via Remote Desktop should work again."
Microsoft has also officially acknowledged a third bug which crashes Outlook Classic when using POP accounts, according to the blog Windows Latest, which adds that that bug has not yet been fixed.
They've also identified other minor bugs, including "a black screen problem in Windows 11 KB5074109... either due to the update itself or some compatibility issues with GPU drivers." After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back. I can't pinpoint any specific configuration, but I can confirm the black screen issue has been observed on a small subset of PCs with both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. After you install the January 2026 Update, Windows triggers random black screens where the desktop freezes for a second or two, the display goes black, then everything comes back.
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b. Other issues that have cropped up in Windows 11 in the last year include a bug that caused Task Manager to fail to close when the user exited the application, causing system resources to lock up after a prolonged period of time if the user had opened and closed Task Manager multiple times in a session.
c. There was also an update that somehow br
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Re:Not That Big Of A Deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe there was a bug they aren't telling us about, like something that allowed people to bypass DRM when consuming some form of media. THAT will get Microsoft's actual clients really angry and demand an immediate resolution.
Something that puts us all at risk of being victimized by criminals, on the other hand, can be buried in the priority queue for months or years.
I imagine that Microsoft's dev team is under the same irrational deadline pressure that all other dev teams face. Business owners perpetually insist that development is taking to long and that we are doomed if this doesn't get out the door in time. It's even worse now that they think "there, you have AI, so where's my 10x productivity gain?" The real irony being that even if they did get a bonafide 10x productivity gain (by any means), it would feel to them like things slowed down a little bit, because their sense of how fast things are going is mostly a function of how much they want to accomplish, and that goal always expands to exceed their productive capacity.
So, everything is rushed out and buggy, even (and especially) from a company like Microsoft. Enough resources to buy multiple sovereign nations, and still unable to produce reliable software.
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"Victimized by criminals" = You mean when someone downloads something from an untrustworthy source or clicks a link in an untrustworthy email? Well, maybe... don't do that. (this is coming from someone who hasn't used a virus scanner for 24 years, and zero viruses).
-- still running Win10
Re:Not That Big Of A Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
The bugs may not be that much of a big deal (given MS did an emergency patch, they probably were a big deal at least for some customers). But the type of process that allows crap like this in production is a big deal and should have most people migrate away from Microsoft trash.
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More an annoyance than a bug, but for people that use the night color shifting, in Win10 it was a smooth transition between day and night colors. They found a way to crapify it in 11 by having it change colors right away, no more transition.
And they even found a way to break the news and interests feature if you move the start button to the left. If I hover the mouse over the widget on my main screen, it's OK. On my right monitor, it pops open on that monitor's left side. If I hover the mouse on the left mo
Outlook crashing with POP accounts (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Outlook crashing with POP accounts (Score:5, Funny)
Probably asked Copilot to rewrite it in Rust.
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Microsoft is famous for their mastery of the Art of Stupid Engineering. Apparently, Win11 user numbers are slowly dropping and Win10 user numbers are slowly increasing at this time.
Microsoft is apparently not managed well. (Score:2)
Also, the world needs open-source Operating Systems. Improving an operating system should not be a way of making a huge amount of money.
There is a HUGE difference between managing a business to make the most money and serving the users of operating systems well.
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I completely agree. In particular
Also, the world needs open-source Operating Systems. Improving an operating system should not be a way of making a huge amount of money.
is right on the money. A mainstream OS is critical infrastructure these days. Allowing anybody to make a ton of money off any critical infrastructure is an excessively bad idea.
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> There is a HUGE difference between managing a business to make the most money and serving the users of operating systems well.
One could argue that in a mature product, these are mutually exclusive goals. Windows is 40 years old.
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How on earth do you introduce a bug in handling POP3 protocol? Surely that code was mature by the turn of the last century.
It's a long story I will condense somewhat, but in the early 2010s I worked for a Fortune 500 company where we had a similar stupid "How did this happen?" problem. We had assigned an H1-B guy to write the code for a new feature on our department's main product. The manager guy in charge of our product stopped doing code reviews because they took time. So new guy wrote code that sort of worked in that the new feature did work, but it never freed up the memory it used after the user stopped using the fea
Re: Outlook crashing with POP accounts (Score:4, Insightful)
If the manager decides to stop doing code reviews, the problem is not the H1B.
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C'mon man, you're missing the overt racismo of foreigners can't code.
They took our jerbs!
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It might be, but if so, then there are two problems.
But yes, the primary failure is in management. But we've all known that for decades when it comes to Microsoft.
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As I remember joking back in the late 80s when there was an open source replacement for the DOS sort program that was an order and a half magnitude faster, about the DOS version of sort.exe:
This must have been written by an intern on a Friday afternoon in between foosball games.
More reasons not that big of a deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of the identified issues, the only bug that affects 24H2 or 25H2 is the Remote Desktop sign in failure bug, which would impact enterprises but shouldn't impact most consumers of the OS. So this out of band update practically doesn't apply to most gamers or home users of Windows. (Unless your company allows you to use your personal computer for Azure Virtual Desktop).
The other issue, which impacts Windows 11 23H2 (which you really should be off of), only impacts System Guard Secure Launch deployments--which at this point are so few and far in between that it's not even worth discussing. I'd wager a good 85% of deployed Windows systems either do not support nor do not have enabled Secure Launch.
For example, to even use Secure Launch on an AMD platform you need to have a "Pro" CPU. Intel's newer CPUs have these features, but AMD does not.
Considering AMD is currently the gamer's CPU choice du jour, you'd have to have a Ryzen Pro *and* Windows 11 23H2 to be impacted, *and* Secure Launch/HVCI/etc must all be enabled. And most internet websites that teach you how to "tweak" your Windows for "peak gaming" tell you to turn all of these security features off anyway.
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Why 11? So we get to fight all these bugs and changes to the OS?
I'll run unsupported Win10, thank you very much... if I knew for absolute that 7 would work perfect on my systems, I'd go back to it.
-- Threadripper 3960X, 128gigs DDR4, Titan X, boots from nvme... I won't have to upgrade for a couple years.
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Windows 10 on a 9800X3D puts your system at a performance disadvantage. (Although in raw framerate numbers when you're GPU limited it might not be as noticeable). But certainly the overall OS performance is going to be worse.
Totally Fucked My GF's Computer (Score:2)
I've spent the weekend backing up and restoring my gf's computer after installing this update. Her computer started freezing about 2-3 minutes after booting after the update.
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Meanwhile (Score:3, Insightful)
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they are too busy calling X11 users fascists to fix their Wayland bugs.
If the reality weren't so incredibly sad, this would be a hilarious comment.
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But is it true? I haven't used Gnome since Gnome2, and haven't followed it's development, so I really don't know. (Considering what they did with Gnome3 I find it believable.)
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It's not even a parody, they actually did exactly this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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But is it true?
It is. When you voice any preference for X11 you're a "fascist maggot." That's the official term, anyhow. There is a Xorg fork called Xlibre. It exists mostly because there are X11 fans that want to continue and improve X11, but also because Xorg, Gnome and many other projects (OpenSUSE, Fedora, Alpine... the list is long,) have descended into full-on purity spiral ban-hammer tyranny, removing en-masse (banned from forums, commit privileges, leadership positions, etc.) anyone not sufficiently committed
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Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
That is not even its main issue, IMO. It does not have feature parity with X11. In particular, the design does not even properly allow for remote access. Fixing it is explicitly a non-goal. As long as that remains the case, Wayland is going to remain a very tough sale. I have to disable Wayland on every Linux install I have just to get VNC to work, except on Raspberry Pi where it works out of the box with WayVNC somehow.
I recently installed Kali Linux in a VM. It defaults to X11 without Gnome. It works very
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As someone who came up on X terminals, the concept of an X system that can't do the standard client/server scheme just blows my mind.
And I remember when X.org was the upstart fork of XFree86!
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But Wayland has too many Linux dependencies, which is why it doesn't exist on the BSDs. Although there have been projects to bring it to FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Another problem w/ Wayland is that it is behind X11 when it comes to accessibility features
XLibre had a whole boatload of bug fixes that X.org didn't want do. Which is why the XLibre founder forked it to XLibre, and fixed those bugs. It has now been embraced by the BSDs, as well as a number of Linux distros
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Informative)
anyone not sufficiently committed to DEI. Xlibre is explicitly apolitical for this reason.
I looked into it as I am concerned about the future of the X.org server, and Xlibre is available in the distro I use. I reached the About page, where it tells it's "not at all affiliated with [...] any political activists groups", and then that it's "It's explicitly free of any 'DEI' or similar discriminatory policies".
So it isn't affiliated with a political group, but complains about Big Tech, and bring political opinion about DEI, aka political rants. The project claims to be open to be welcoming, but the mission statement that will, by design, attract or antagonise certain groups. So I left it there, because it's heading to a "Nazi Bar Problem".
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The truth or falsehood of the statement ("DEI is discriminatory") isn't my concern. I could well be in agreement. What I am saying is it's definitely a political opinion, which kinds of contradicts the claim that Xlibre isn't affiliated to a political group, and makes it a less interesting place for me to download (or contribute, for those who are competent).
When I mention "Nazi bar problem", your statements (and mine) illustrate the problem. It is the mention of DEI in the Xlibre About page that ultimately
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they are too busy calling X11 users fascists to fix their Wayland bugs.
If the reality weren't so incredibly sad, this would be a hilarious comment.
Sometimes, Slashdot could really use a "sad, but true" moderator state...
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
and I am basically stuck with no good operating system
None of what you wrote concerns the operating system.
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and I am basically stuck with no good operating system
None of what you wrote concerns the operating system.
You're right from a traditional PC operating system definition POV, but i get what he's saying in that the effective level of abstraction that people care about in their daily lives, even nerds, has moved up. Like i want my phone, email, text messages, online banking, router, wifi, work VPN, various cloud "stuff", etc to work and having anything in the chain NOT work is a much bigger deal today than it was 20 years ago or even 10 years ago because so much of services has moved on-line. Now it's much
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
I can't relate to the story you mention (or can't remember it happening). It sounds really annoying. To GP's point, if you don't like Gnome (and I can relate to that), just use a different DE. It's really easy and they're basically all better.
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I haven't used Gnome in many years, (and i should cop to not having used Desktop linux in years too, as i type from at you from Win11, but not using Gnome for MORE years than that! )
But my story and statement was more general, about random things in the guts of the "infrastructure" software one has grown dependent on. I have a foot in both worlds in that this kind of fragility and complexity is part of what keeps me (and probably many here) employed and not replaced by 4GLs, low code environments and, mor
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
I get your point but I don't think it is universally true. I believed your story from the start; but it is a story of using Ubuntu and Snap, which I think are two parts of that problem you describe, that the software infrastructure/stack/whatever we call it sometimes fails through no fault of the user.
This problem is real, but it is also not affecting everyone equally. It affects users of Ubuntu and Snap a lot more than users of Debian stable who stay away from Snap. I know because I am both, one at home an
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Yes, so? Gnome is an _application_ and not part of the OS. I, for example, run fvwm2 and do not even have Gnome installed.
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It just goes to show that open source is just as bad
This blanket statement is off the mark. Open source isn't one thing; there is a lot of good open source work that values quality and isn't being actively destroyed by political activists LARPing as hero developers.
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Gnome has open 16 bugs that lead to a crash in Nautilus, and they are too busy calling X11 users fascists to fix their Wayland bugs. Then Firefox is down to 1.99% market share because they chose to waste donators money on AI slop. It just goes to show that open source is just as bad when it comes to mismanagement, and I am basically stuck with no good operating system or browser.
Well, they are getting rid of middle-click b'cos they wanna be more like Windows. If they have all those bugs, then I'd say they've achieved their goal
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Hooray for KDE. Too bad GNOME forced systemd on us before becoming irrelevant.
Not spotted in testing? (Score:2)
I was under the impression MS does not test Windows releases anymore. The large number of issues would support that assumption.
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Maybe if we tell Microslop they can have agentic AI do the testing they'll do some. The agentic LLMs will probably mess up half the testing but it's better than nothing...I think...
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I am not sure it would be better. It will create deep-set hard or impossible to correct problems. Like at some time attackers finding remote backdoors in Windows that cannot be fixed without months or years of work, or not at all without throwing it away.
There is at least some good news: Apparently Win10 gains users while Win11 loses them. Given that Win11 has now several times done hard crashes on hardware that just worked fine under Win10 and Win11 being slower, I am not surprised. Windows is going the wa
They need to AI harder. (Score:1)
Everything will be better when humans are out of the loop.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest... (Score:2)
... maybe they shouldn't be having AI do coding? Or QA?
Let AI write code, they said. (Score:2)
It'll be fine, they said.
I have a theory (Score:2)
Vibe coding is out of hand. (Score:2)
This is the result of vibe coding in the workplace; if 30 per cent of all code is written by AI, this will only get worse. Once the code base gets big enough, the AI hallucinations will only result in more and more slop. This would be a mess to debug and fix. Using vibe coding for massive projects only results in pain.
Trending (Score:2)
#microslop
I see all those layoffs are going well (Score:2)
Yo dawg (Score:2)
We heard you like patching, so we patched your patch so you can patch while you patch.
The patch works great! (Score:2)
The patch works really well. Haven't had any issues. Make sure you get it from the right source. I downloaded mine from ubuntu.com.
This morning 1/19 (Score:2)
MS issued a widespread warning of systemwide MS 'degradation' to the point that for some users they may simply not be able to send/receive email.
More 'vibe' coding from MS, I presume?
"Out of Band" Appears Misused (Score:2)
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The phrase has been generalized to mean that the release has been made outside of the standard release schedule. You might not like that use of it, but it's pretty common.
Feature? (Score:1)
Wait. That's not a feature?
Windows 12 (Score:2)
I might consider downgrading from win 10 to win 11 once win 12 comes out.