Microsoft has quietly confirmed that a routine August security roll‑out has broken core recovery features on multiple Windows builds, and an out‑of‑band emergency update is imminent to fix failed Reset and Recovery operations for affected platforms.
Background
Microsoft shipped its August 12, 2025 Patch Tuesday cumulative updates across supported Windows channels. The packages included KB5063878 for Windows 11 24H2, KB5063875 for Windows 11 23H2/22H2, and KB5063709 for several Windows 10 builds — all mandatory security releases intended to close active vulnerabilities. Independent coverage and Microsoft’s own support pages document the release and the build numbers associated with those updates. (bleepingcomputer.com, support.microsoft.com)Within days of that deployment, two separate but related problems emerged that elevated what normally would be routine patching into an incident requiring emergency mitigation:
- A functionality regression that can cause Reset this PC, Fix problems using Windows Update, and some remote wipe operations to fail and roll back when invoked on certain builds. Microsoft has acknowledged this behavior and plans an out‑of‑band fix.
- Independent community reports and tech press investigations that a different August cumulative (principally KB5063878 on Windows 11 24H2) may trigger storage instability during large, sustained file writes on some SSDs, potentially causing drives to disappear or produce corrupted data under specific conditions. These reports are preliminary and under investigation by SSD vendors and Microsoft. (tomshardware.com, borncity.com)
What Microsoft says — the official position
Microsoft’s support channels and product documentation reflect the dual reality of mass patching and post‑release incident response. The official KB entries for the August releases document the security content and, in some cases, initially reported "no known issues" on the public KB pages; however, Microsoft updated certain guidance and acknowledged specific regressions through discrete support notices and release health messaging after community reporting.Most critically, Microsoft explicitly warned that “after installing the August 2025 Windows security update (Originating KBs), attempts to reset or recover the device might fail,” listing the affected originating KBs and affected client platform versions, and advising that an out‑of‑band update is being prepared to resolve the recovery‑flow failures. That advisory is the clearest confirmation that Reset & Recovery flows on affected versions are not reliable until a fix ships.
At time of writing, Microsoft’s KB pages for the affected releases (as indexed publicly) still contain mixed messaging: the standard KB text lists the update details and often states “Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues,” while specific support articles or release‑health messages call out confirmed customer impact and mitigation steps. This is typical of a large global rollout—official KB pages capture the fixed content for each update; release health and targeted advisories are the channels Microsoft uses to post emergent, scenario‑specific warnings. (borncity.com, support.microsoft.com)
Why this matters: risk and scope
These failures strike at two different layers of system reliability and administration:- Recovery flow failure (Reset & Recovery): The Windows recovery pathways — including Reset this PC and cloud recovery options — are the last line when an installation is damaged or a machine is being prepared for hand‑off. If those flows silently fail and roll back, users and administrators who rely on them for remediation, re‑provisioning, or decommissioning will face wasted time, incomplete recovery, or worse, an inability to sanitize or reinitialize devices safely. The inability to complete a reset also complicates support for remote or less technical users who depend on guided recovery. Microsoft’s acknowledgment makes this a confirmed, immediate risk for affected builds. (windowslatest.com, theregister.com)
- Storage instability (large writes / SSDs): Reports across social media and independent testing threads indicate that heavy continuous writes (commonly cited thresholds: ~50 GB of contiguous writes or sustained writes when an SSD is >60% full in some tests) triggered some NVMe/M.2 SSDs to disappear from the OS or return corrupted data until a reboot. Some vendors (notably controller partner Phison) are investigating, and multiple outlets have replicated or reported similar user cases. If a shipped security update causes device firmware or driver interactions that destabilize storage, the risk includes file corruption and unrecoverable data loss in extreme cases. At present Microsoft has not universally confirmed permanent data loss across the installed base; investigations are ongoing. (tomshardware.com, easeus.com, borncity.com)
Independent corroboration — what the press and community found
Multiple reputable independent outlets and community sources reported and analyzed the incident from different angles:- Windows‑focused news sites captured Microsoft’s advisory and dissected which KBs and OS versions were implicated by the recovery regression, and reported Microsoft’s intention to ship an out‑of‑band fix. Those sites also tracked enterprise‑side consequences for WSUS/SCCM deliveries when similar August packages experienced WSUS‑specific installation errors.
- Technical publications and community researchers reproduced or stress‑tested the SSD disappearance problem, documenting scenarios (large writes, near‑full drives, specific controller models) and collecting user reports. SSD component vendors — notably Phison — publicly acknowledged industry engagement on the issue and committed to follow‑up, illustrating that the storage problem is being treated seriously by both vendors and researchers. However, vendors and Microsoft have characterized the storage reports as under investigation and have not universally confirmed a single root cause at the time of these reports. (tomshardware.com, borncity.com)
- Enterprise and sysadmin forums — where real‑world rollout telemetry accumulates quickly — have issued practical guidance: pause wide deployment of the August cumulative in critical production rings until Microsoft’s out‑of‑band fixes and vendor advisories arrive; prefer manual installs for critical hosts as a stopgap; and consider Known Issue Rollback (KIR) for enterprise environments where available.
Practical guidance for Windows users and administrators
Given the confirmed recovery regression and the unsettled state of storage reports, here is a prioritized, pragmatic checklist to reduce risk and preserve data and uptime:- Immediate caution (for all users)
- Do not run Settings > System > Recovery > Reset this PC or Fix problems using Windows Update on systems running Windows 11 23H2/22H2 or affected Windows 10 builds that have the August originating KBs installed. Microsoft specifically warns these operations may fail.
- Make a fresh, verified backup of all important data before attempting any recovery, major installs, or large file operations. Use image backups (VHDX or full disk images) or known‑good file backups to external media/cloud.
- For Windows 11 24H2 users (storage caution)
- If you installed KB5063878 on Windows 11 24H2 and you perform large, continuous writes (game installs, large archive extraction, bulk data migration), split transfers into smaller chunks and avoid saturating drives if possible until the storage reports resolve. Multiple independent tests report failures under sustained load; splitting writes reduces risk. (easeus.com, borncity.com)
- For enterprise admins and managed fleets
- Pause automatic approvals for the August cumulative (or move devices into a controlled pilot ring) until Microsoft’s out‑of‑band patches and vendor guidance are available and validated in your environment. Use staged rollouts that mimic production WSUS/SCCM paths.
- If WSUS/SCCM installs are failing with 0x80240069 or similar errors, apply Microsoft’s known mitigations (KIR) where applicable rather than broad registry workarounds. KIR is the auditable, reversible path Microsoft designed for these incidents.
- For critical hosts that must receive security fixes immediately, consider manual installation from Microsoft Update Catalog for those individual systems while the service path fix is prepared.
- How to check whether you have the problematic update(s)
- Open Settings > Windows Update > Update history and look for the August 12, 2025 KB entries (KB5063878, KB5063875, KB5063709, etc.). On Windows 11 24H2 you’ll see build 26100.4946 after KB5063878; on Windows 11 23H2 the build will reflect the KB5063875 package. (bleepingcomputer.com, borncity.com)
- If you are forced into recovery and it fails
- Stop, take stock, and do not immediately re‑attempt resets repeatedly (retries may cause further disruption). If the reset fails, use your backups or bootable rescue media created prior to the update. If you don’t have a backup, consult vendor or professional recovery channels — the recovery process can be destructive and data recovery is harder once operations were attempted.
- Monitor Microsoft channels
- Watch the Windows Release Health dashboard, the KB article pages, and official Microsoft support advisories for the out‑of‑band update rollouts. Microsoft indicated an emergency patch would ship in the coming days — in similar incidents that patch can appear as a small servicing fix or a revised LCU/SSU combination. (support.microsoft.com, askwoody.com)
Technical analysis — how could this have happened?
Modern Windows servicing is a complex, telemetry‑driven pipeline involving multiple payload types (LCU, SSU), varianted branches for channels and builds, and variant gating logic for enterprise delivery topologies like WSUS and SCCM. The two failure modes reported this month likely stem from delivery‑path and variant interaction regressions or platform/hardware interaction regressions respectively:- Reset & Recovery regression: this appears to be an internal servicing metadata or recovery‑flow regression introduced in the August cumulative for certain OS branches. Recovery code paths that orchestrate cloud download, local image mounting, or component replacement may have been affected by a change in the servicing stack or the LCU payload metadata, causing the operation to abort and roll back without a clear in‑UI warning. Similar delivery‑path regressions have previously produced install error codes (0x80240069) when interacting with WSUS/SCCM server variants. (windowslatest.com, askwoody.com)
- SSD instability: storage devices are increasingly dependent on subtle interactions between OS IO scheduling, NVMe queues, controller firmware caching strategies, and device drivers. A change in kernel I/O handling, caching behavior, or driver/firmware negotiation triggered by an update can expose edge cases on specific controllers or firmware revisions. Early tests implicate Phison controller families and certain DRAM‑less models, but broader reports suggest additional controllers and manufacturers could be implicated under specific load patterns. Because firmware is vendor‑specific and storage behavior varies widely by workload, vendor investigations are essential before ascribing a definitive root cause. (tomshardware.com, borncity.com)
Strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft’s response so far
Strengths:- Microsoft has acknowledged the recovery regression and publicly committed to an out‑of‑band update — that transparency is essential for enterprise and consumer trust during an incident.
- Microsoft’s Known Issue Rollback (KIR) mechanism provides a surgical mitigation path for enterprise customers that reduces the need for manual registry hacks and offers an auditable rollback. This reflects improved incident tooling compared with earlier eras.
- Messaging inconsistencies: the public KB pages for some August updates initially showed “no known issues,” while discrete advisories and community posts flagged serious problems. The fragmented messaging creates confusion; users discover risk only after community reporting. (borncity.com, support.microsoft.com)
- Mixed visibility for non‑enterprise users: consumers and less technical admins may not monitor release health and community outlets closely, so they can unknowingly invoke broken recovery flows. The recovery functions themselves provide little or no warning that they will fail after the update — a dangerous UI/UX omission for a safety‑critical feature.
- Supply‑chain and testing gaps: repeated incidents across successive months indicate Microsoft must expand testing coverage for management topologies and hardware variants, including long‑tail storage controllers used in consumer SSDs. The high diversity of Windows hardware makes 100% testing impossible, but these incidents argue for further investments in variant coverage and broader vendor coordination.
What to expect next
- Microsoft will publish an out‑of‑band patch for the recovery regression; administrators and users should expect a small servicing update or corrected cumulative in the days following the advisory, delivered via Windows Update and the Update Catalog. Until that fix is available, avoid using Reset & Recovery on the affected builds.
- On the storage front, SSD vendors and Microsoft will continue investigation. Expect vendor advisories, firmware updates, and Microsoft follow‑ups if a specific interaction is confirmed. Until then, conservative file‑transfer practices and verified backups are the best defense. (tomshardware.com, easeus.com)
- Enterprises should plan to deploy the out‑of‑band fix in a controlled, staged fashion and be prepared to use KIR or manual installs for critical hosts depending on the chosen remediation path.
Conclusion
This week’s episode is a blunt reminder that even security updates — which are critically important — can introduce operational regressions that affect the fundamental resilience of systems. Microsoft has acknowledged the worst of the problems (failed Reset & Recovery) and promised an out‑of‑band fix, and independent reporting has quickly surfaced credible storage concerns that remain under vendor investigation. The correct response for users and administrators is conservative: back up, avoid risky recovery flows until patched, stage rollouts, and track Microsoft and vendor advisories closely.Windows remains a vast, heterogeneous platform deployed across billions of devices; that scale is the source of both its utility and its fragility. The balance between delivering critical security patches and preserving operational reliability is a hard, ongoing fight — one that this August incident has put back in the spotlight for users, IT teams, and vendors alike. (support.microsoft.com, tomshardware.com)
Additional technical resources and community analysis remain available through Microsoft’s release health messaging, reputable Windows news outlets, and enterprise operations forums. For users who need immediate remediation steps, the checklist above provides prioritized actions to reduce risk while waiting for vendor patches and Microsoft’s out‑of‑band updates.
Source: Forbes Microsoft Confirms Windows Is Broken—Emergency Update On Way
