Microsoft breaks reset and recovery options on older Windows versions

Microsoft released Patch Tuesday updates for supported versions of Windows exactly a week ago. Although they contained numerous fixes and enhancements, especially in Windows 11, there have also been multiple reports of some aspects of the operating systems just breaking. Examples of these include installation errors, incidents of data corruption, and faulty Event Viewer logs. Now, Microsoft has confirmed a relatively major problem in certain versions of Windows.

In an update on its Windows Release Health dashboard, Microsoft has begun tracking a new problem where users have been reporting that reset and recovery options have broken on their Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs after installing August's Patch Tuesday updates.

If you attempt to reset or recover a device running an older (but still supported) version of Windows 10 or Windows 11, you might run into failures. This option can be triggered through various means including navigating to System >Recovery > Reset my PC, or System > Recovery > Fix problems using Windows Update, or even leveraging RemoteWipe CSP. All of these methods will fail on affected platforms.

Speaking of affected platforms, the following client versions of Windows are impacted, Windows Server is fortunately unaffected:

• Windows 11, version 23H2
• Windows 11, version 22H2
• Windows 10, version 22H2
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021
• Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019
• Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019

It is interesting to see that while lots of Windows versions are impacted, Windows 11, version 24H2 is seemingly not troubled by this. Microsoft markets it as the "most reliable" version of its operating system after all.

It seems that the impact of this bug is quite widespread as Microsoft is working on an emergency fix which will be rolled out as an out-of-band (OOB) update, meaning that we'll have it in our hands prior to the next Patch Tuesday on September 9, 2025.

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Posted Tuesday 19 August 2025 at 5:52 pm AEST (my time).

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