Just when you thought it was safe to update your PC and get back to work, there’s another warning about January’s mandatory security update. You’ll know if you’re affected, because your PC will show you nothing but the Black Screen of Death.
“According to Microsoft,” Windows Latest reports, “affected PCs could suddenly stop booting and land on the Black Screen of Death (BSOD) error with stop code UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.”
Microsoft says it has “received a limited number of reports of an issue in which devices are failing to boot.” It has asked affected users and admins to report issued. In reality, it’s too soon to know how widely this impacts. All update issues start as “limited” numbers, but then it becomes clear with some that it’s much more widespread.
Thus far we know it affects both Windows 11 25H2 and Windows 11 24H2 with KB5074109 installed. This mandatory update “patches as many as a hundred known security issues, which is why it’s installed automatically on PCs.”
This comes just hours after reports that another emergency update has been issued by Microsoft to affect other problems besetting users, specifically Outlook becoming “unusable.” And it comes a week after the first emergency update for January fixed failed shutdowns and remote logins. All told, a difficult few weeks for Microsoft.
That 0xED error code “is typically related to system corruption, a damaged BIOS/boot, or hardware failure, specifically the drive.” Affected devices “show a black screen with the message ‘Your device ran into a problem and needs a restart. You can restart.’ At this stage, the device cannot complete startup and requires manual recovery steps.”
Windows Latest says “Windows Recovery is typically successful, but there are situations where WinRE does not work. In that case, you can use an ISO to clean install Windows. The good news is that only a limited set of devices is affected. The bad news is that Microsoft doesn’t know how many users are affected.”