Windows 10 update causing blue screen of death — just by printing

Windows 10 update causing blue screen of death — just by press

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Watch out, Windows 10 users — at that place'south nonetheless another way yous tin can trigger a blue screen of expiry.

As of the well-nigh contempo update, but printing something can cause your device to crash. Fortunately, there are ways around it, and Microsoft looks to be working on a gear up.

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The newest automatic security update, titled KB5000802 (OS Builds 19041.867 and 19042.867), went alive on March ix. Since information technology'south an automatic update, it's appeared on users' devices without their total knowledge, and surprised some past making their devices keel over when trying to print documents.

The specific app used for printing doesn't seem to matter: there have been reports of the BSOD being brought on past Notepad, Microsoft Office and others.

Ane account, written by user CaffeinePizza on Reddit's r/sysadmin folio, described having the issue caused by the Kyocera Universal Print driver. Several commenters said they had experienced the aforementioned trouble, likewise equally with printer drivers from Zebra and Ricoh.

Swapping to Microsoft's basic PCL6 commuter seems to be an effective solution, co-ordinate to CaffeinePizza, only that ways forgoing the better feature set of printer-specific drivers.

User SkillfulExpert, a commenter on the thread who says they work for Microsoft, has a more involved fix if you are comfortable using the Command Prompt window.

Microsoft has acknowledged the problem, and has seemingly stopped the rollout of KB5000802 to more devices according to Reddit user observations. On the back up folio for the update, information technology writes: "Later installing this update, you lot might receive an APC_INDEX_MISMATCH fault with a blue screen when attempting to print to certain printers in some apps.

"We are shortly investigating and will provide an update when more information is bachelor."

The obvious solution right now is to just uninstall the newest build from your PC. Nevertheless nosotros don't recommend doing this. Removing the update means removing important security updates too, which would put y'all at unnecessary adventure. Information technology'south probably amend to ride this one out until Microsoft releases a fix, if you lot can afford to practise so.

As an aside, if you lot're on Windows 11, you may have noticed the blue screen of death has been replaced by a black i, but now Microsoft is bringing the BSOD dorsum to Windows eleven.

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Richard is a Tom's Guide staff writer based in London, covering news, reviews and how-tos for phones, gaming, audio and whatever else people demand communication on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he's also written for WIRED U.Yard., The Register and Artistic Bloq. When non at work, he's likely thinking well-nigh how to mash the perfect cup of specialty coffee.