Microsoft’s latest security patches have now broken parts of Windows 10

Microsoft’s latest batch of monthly security patches appears to be causing considerable grief, not just for Windows 7 users – who were hit by network issues as we saw yesterday – but also those running Windows 10 April 2018 Update.

And that’s the majority of Windows 10 users, given the slow rollout of the latest October 2018 Update (which has famously had a massive amount of problems of its own).

There are a number of reports online of some Windows 10 users running the April 2018 Update suffering at the hands of update KB4480966. This is a security patch which addresses a number of flaws including a hole in PowerShell, an issue with the Microsoft Jet Database Engine, and a Windows DHCP client memory corruption vulnerability (plus gremlins in the works for Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and more).

After installing this patch, as MSPoweruser reports, some folks have hit network issues, or problems with applications working – including Windows Hello failing – along with a dreaded Blue Screen of Death issue reported by one denizen of Twitter.

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Microsoft has noted several issues itself, including a problem where some users are unable to pin a web link to the Start menu or taskbar any longer after installing this security update.

Along with an issue whereby “third-party applications may have difficulty authenticating hotspots”. The solution to this particular inconvenience is expected to be available mid-January – so that should be within the next week or so – with the timeframe for patching the Start menu problem not stated at the moment (Microsoft says it’s “working on a resolution”).

So we should hear more on the latter soon enough, then, and hopefully Microsoft is currently investigating these reports of other issues.

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).