Windows 11 users report critical bugs in newest KB5074105 optional January update

Microsoft released the KB5074105 update for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 just hours ago, and already people have taken to Microsoft Q&A to report the latest round of issues that have cropped up since updating. Despite providing fixes with this update, some users are already reporting issues such as integrated laptop cameras becoming non-functional and critical lock screen components crashing immediately upon system startup. Microsoft itself has noted no known issues.

In one of the reports, from the user Mark S, the new update was installed yesterday on an Acer laptop resulting in the messing up of the in-built camera. Since the update, the user reports that upon opening the camera app, it blinks non-stop off and on and when on most webpages or meeting apps the computer reports a hardware failure and doesn’t produce a picture or video. The update is definitely the cause of the issues though because after uninstalling the update, the user noted that everything was back to normal. For now, Mark S is keeping the update off his system as he says he relies on the webcam for his job.

The lock screen widget issue was reported by the user percesus, but in quite a bit less detail. This user notes that they have installed the update and now when the lock screen clock appears, it crashes after about two seconds causing it to disappear. It is not known if uninstalling the update rectifies this feature, so right now we are just assuming that it’s the update’s fault rather than some other issue.

In our own comments section, user Davikar noted that everything seemed OK for them so far after installing the update, but did note that the taskbar took one minute to load after reboot. This could just be a result of Microsoft getting things into place following the update rather than a persistent issue.

January has been somewhat of a disaster for Windows 11 updates, with things starting to go wrong on people’s systems after applying the Patch Tuesday update with users reporting an array of problems. If you have installed this latest update and run into some issues, you can use the Windows Update history menu to uninstall KB5074105. Since this is an optional C-update, it is not mandatory for security and can be safely skipped or paused to prevent it installing in the future.

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Posted Saturday 31 January 2026 at 6:29 am AEST (my time).

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