14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 cumulative update KB4041676 is one of the patches that went live this Patch Tuesday, being aimed at systems running the Creators Update and bringing both security improvements and bug fixes.
But a number of computers that installed this particular update ended up unable to boot and getting a BSOD, with a growing number of reports making it to the web in the last 24 hours.
Microsoft explains in a support article that it’s all been caused by what it describes as a “publishing issue,” pointing out that systems getting the update via Windows Update or Windows Update for Business were not affected. Furthermore, the company confirmed the issue to also occur after installing cumulative update KB4041691.
“We have corrected the publishing issue as of the afternoon of October 10th and have validated the cumulative security updates. We recommend all customers take these cumulative security updates,” Microsoft explains.
Three different options
Having the problem fixed leaves system admins with three different scenarios. In case they have been offered the update, but haven’t yet downloaded and installed them, they should re-scan for updates to automatically resolve the publishing issue.
Those who have downloaded the updates but have not rebooted to install need to remove pending updates. Microsoft provides the full instructions to do this in the support article here, along with information on how to deal with a BSOD that’s being caused by this botched update.
The latter comes down to booting to system recovery and running a bunch of commands to restore the operating system and then boot back to the desktop in order to deploy the correct updates.
At this point, it’s not yet known how many systems were impacted by this blunder, but given that it affected mostly enterprises, there’s no doubt IT admins aren’t very happy with it, especially because the botched cumulative update rendered systems useless with no way to boot back to the desktop.