Microsoft Released an Out-of-Band Update to Rollback January Patch's VPN Issues

"Microsoft's first Patch Tuesday for 2022 was a rocky start to the year, giving admins and users numerous headaches to deal with..." reports ZDNet. "The Windows Update on January 11 was intended to address 96 security flaws but also brought a load of pain for users and admins." "One of the major issues that came up during the week for IT admins included finding that Windows Server 2012 became stuck in a boot loop," adds the Verge, "while other versions suffered broken Windows VPN clients, and some hard drives appeared as RAW format (and unusable). Many IT Admins were forced to roll back the updates - leaving many servers vulnerable with none of last week's security patches." And now for some versions of Windows, this week Microsoft "released emergency out-of-band updates to address multiple issues..." reports BleepingComputer:"This update addresses issues related to VPN connectivity, Windows Server Domain Controllers restarting, Virtual Machines start failure," the company said.... According to admin reports, Windows domain controllers were being plagued by spontaneous reboots, Hyper-V was no longer starting on Windows servers, and Windows Resilient File System (ReFS) volumes were no longer accessible after deploying the January 2022 updates. Windows 10 users and administrators also reported problems with L2TP VPN connections after installing the recent Windows 10 and Windows 11 cumulative updates and seeing "Can't connect to VPN." errors.... [S]ince Microsoft also bundles all the security updates with these Windows cumulative updates, removing them will also remove all fixes for vulnerabilities patched during the January 2022 Patch Tuesday. While all the updates are available for download on the Microsoft Update Catalog, some of them can also be installed directly through Windows Update, notes Bleeping Computer. But "You will have to manually check for updates if you want to install the emergency fixes through Windows Update because they are optional updates and will not install automatically." ZDNet adds:As Ask Woody's influential IT admin blogger Susan Bradley recently argued in 2020, Microsoft's decision to roll up patches in a big bundle on the second Tuesday of every month requires admins to place a great deal of trust in the company. That trust is eroded if applying the updates results in a lag on productivity from buggy patches. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader waspleg for sharing the story.

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