Emergency Windows 10 update finally puts an end to printer problems (we hope)
Another day, another out-of-band patch
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Microsofthas rushed out another out-of-band patch to fix problems which have hit theprintersof someWindows 10users, following a recent debacle that you might have been following.
This trouble started when theWindows 10cumulative updates for March triggeredBlue Screen of Death crashes with some printers, and apparently thefix for those issues– and the original updates themselves –caused further miseryfor other printer users who experienced different problems. The latter gremlins mainly revolved around bits of printed documents going missing (parts of pages, or entire pages being blank for that matter).
At any rate, cumulative updateKB5001649(for the May 2020 Update and October 2020 Update) is the latest emergency patch Microsoft has just deployed to cure all these aforementioned bugbears (without any other unintended damage cropping up elsewhere, with any luck).
There are also other similar patches targeting older versions of Windows 10, asWindows Latest, which spotted this, observes (KB5001648 is for machines running the feature updates from 2019).
Grab if you need
As with the previous out-of-band patching, these are optional updates, and should only be installed if you are suffering from one of the described printer issues. Otherwise you don’t need them, obviously enough.
To grab the patch, simply head to Windows Update and manually check for updates, and you should see the relevant one for your PC. If not, the patches are also available in the Microsoft Update Catalog (see here for KB5001649).
We can keep our fingers firmly crossed that this is the last instalment in this particular patching episode, but who knows, the way things have been going thus far.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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