Microsoft patches the patch that put Windows 11 in a coma

Microsoft is patching another patch that dumped some PCs into recovery mode with an unhelpful error code.

The glitch was caused by the May Patch Tuesday update, which failed to install on a small number of Windows 11 machines. The broken patch mostly hurt virtual boxes, leaving them in recovery mode with a boot error.

This affected Windows 11 23H2 and 22H2 systems, and resulted in the message: "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired. The operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors. File: ACPI.sys. Error code: 0xc0000098."

As the issue primarily affected virtual machines (although Microsoft noted that it had been seen on some physical devices), it was more of a headache for IT administrators than for users of the Home and Pro editions of Windows 11.

The fix, KB5062170, deals with the error, yet it retains the Noto fonts issue, where CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) can appear blurry in Chromium browsers at 100 percent scaling. The workaround is to up the scaling to 125 or 150 percent.

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• Microsoft's May Patch Tuesday update fails on some Windows 11 VMs
• Microsoft is opening Windows Update to third-party apps

Out-of-band fixes are becoming depressingly common for Microsoft. Even Windows Server is not immune to Microsoft's approach to quality control – earlier this year, an out-of-band patch was needed to deal with a NUMA-related problem that prevented affected servers from booting.

In May, another out-of-band update was deployed to address some Windows 10 devices falling into BitLocker recovery after yet another broken patch. As with the latest problem, enterprise IT administrators found themselves having to deal with it while consumers were mainly unaffected.

Though Microsoft deserves credit for quickly addressing its update issues, it would be helpful if it didn't break them in the first place. ®