Microsoft’s security update this month has suddenly been described as a “nightmare” for the company, after the most surprising mistake we’ve seen yet in amongst the recent litany of install bugs hitting Windows 10 and Windows 11 users.
The Windows-maker has pitched 2025 as “the year of the PC refresh,” as the company pushes Copilot+ PCs, “the fastest, most intelligent and most secure Windows PCs ever built.” It’s somewhat awkward then, that it has just warned its latest security update brings “an issue with the Microsoft Copilot app affecting some devices. The app is unintentionally uninstalled and unpinned from the taskbar.”
Indeed — you read that right. As Windows Latest reports, the update “is now turning out to be a nightmare for Microsoft’s efforts to ‘add Copilot to every PC’ because it has a bug that uninstalls the AI assistant.” This affects Windows 11 users but “worse, it even affects Windows 10 installations with KB5053606.”
Microsoft says it is “working on a resolution to address this issue. In the meantime, affected users can reinstall the app from the Microsoft Store and manually pin it to the taskbar,” and assured that this does not affect the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
The workaround to manually reinstall Copilot is ironic, because as Windows Latest points out, “Copilot was automatically installed on all our PCs. Nobody asked for Copilot on their PCs, and a bug now ‘unintentionally’ takes it down.”
This latest warning follows hot on the heels of wider reports into installation issues with the latest fixes, including some users seeing the infamous blue screen of death after updating. The security updated is mandatory, but some users need to reverse and pause the install to keep their PCs running as normal until the issues are fixed.
This month’s Microsoft security update brings a raft of critical fixes, following multiple zero-day warnings as vulnerabilities are exploited in the wild with PCs under attack. This is a critical year for Windows and Microsoft’s security support, with 800 million Windows 10 users yet to move to the newer OS. This is a tricky situation for users being asked to move against this backdrop of unstable Windows 11 updates.