Whether we want them to be or not, Microsoft is keen to get our Windows 11 installations up to date. However, the company’s mission to establish a shared baseline version of its operating system is, of course, causing problems. Now, four months after it began its latest push of forced updates, its plans are now on pause following reports of serious bugs.
Windows 11 is, of course, no stranger to buggy updates. Just a few months ago, Microsoft released a version of the operating system that made it impossible to change the photo associated with your user account. While this example is relatively minor, the reported effects for this particular patch are much more inconvenient and severe.
The 23H2 update, as its name suggests, first launched back in the second half of 2023. However, Microsoft began automatically applying the update to all PCs from February 2024. In that time, two minor bugs associated with the patch have emerged, affecting the Photos app and Edge browser. Unfortunately, a single major issue remains too, namely the risk of incurring a boot loop.
In light of this, Microsoft is pausing the automatic rollout of the update across all devices. In fairness to the company, this issue came to light June 25, so it is at least acting quickly to feedback from affected users. It announced the change of policy via the Windows 11 23H2 known issues blog (via Tom’s Hardware).
Thankfully, this issue is more likely to affect PCs using virtual machine tools so the number of users at risk should be relatively low. Nonetheless, if you’re not in this boat, there’s no harm in finally pulling the trigger on that long overdue set of updates.