Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday caused widespread BSOD Wednesday

Microsoft issues new fix to fix its shonky patches

Microsoft latest Patch Tuesday has been blamed for causing an endless 'blue screen of death' (BSOD) bootloop - forcing the company to rush out a fix.

Microsoft's October Patch Tuesday rolled out earlier this week, fixing 62 vulnerabilities. These included fixes for a number of zero-day flaws, as well as security flaws labelled 'critical'. Microsoft urged users to install the patches straightaway.

However, many organisations have found that fixes have wreaked havoc on their business PCs, which have been in an endless reboot loop since attempting to install the patches.

One user on the Microsoft Answers website moaned: "ALL of the systems running 1703 blue screen upon reboot AFTER applying this patch (KB4041676). The message that comes up is INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE. After that, it reboots automatically, attempts to boot again, and then displays the 'Automatic Repair' screen. None of these systems make it past this message."

Another responded: "Similar issue here, cross-vendor (HP and Lenovo, thankfully no VMs have been hit). System Restore wasn't working, all the usual tricks that have been mentioned in here didn't work, and even a wusa /uninstall /kb:4041676 failed as it couldn't find the KB on at least one offending system."

Users have speculated that the mandatory update fails on systems with support for USB Type-C Connector System Software Interface (USCI), and suggest to go into the system BIOS and disable UCSI to apply the updates. However, other reported issues on systems without USB Type-C.

In a statement, Microsoft says that the issue has been fixed. Despite some reports that Windows 10 Home users have been affected by the borkage, the company confirmed that the issue only affected enterprise consumers and not those using Windows Update to install the patches.

"Microsoft is aware of a publishing issue with the October 10th, 2017 monthly security updates for Windows 10 version 1703 (KB4041676) and version 1607 (KB4041691), and Windows Server 2016 (KB4041691) for WSUS/SCCM managed devices. Customers that download updates directly from Windows Update(Home and consumer devices) or Windows Update for Business are not impacted," it grovelled.

"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."

The company has recommended that affected users clear the cache on WSUS servers to ensure that latest packages are available.