With the transition away from mainstream support for Windows 10, both businesses and individual users find themselves navigating the complexities of Microsoft’s Extended Security Update program. As many are compelled to continue using Windows 10, the reliability of updates becomes paramount. Unfortunately, recent developments have raised concerns regarding the stability of these updates.
Issues with the KB5071546 Update
Microsoft has recently acknowledged that the KB5071546 update, released earlier this month, is causing significant disruptions to the Message Queuing (MSMQ) functionality. While this may not affect the average home user, the implications for businesses are profound. Applications reliant on MSMQ are at risk of failure, which could lead to severe operational setbacks.
The company has yet to provide a remedy for this issue, despite its recognition of the problem. In an update to the release notes for the KB5071546 update, Microsoft detailed the following symptoms under the Known issues in this update section:
Symptoms
After installing this update, users might face issues with the Message Queuing (MSMQ) functionality. This issue also impacts clustered MSMQ environments under load. Due to this issue, users might encounter the following symptoms:
- MSMQ queues becoming inactive
- IIS sites failing with “Insufficient resources to perform operation” errors
- Applications unable to write to queues
- Errors such as “The message file ‘C:WindowsSystem32msmqstorage*.mq’ cannot be created” when creating message files
- Misleading logs, such as “There is insufficient disk space or memory”, despite sufficient disk space and memory being available
This issue stems from recent changes made to the MSMQ security model and NTFS permissions on the C:WindowsSystem32MSMQstorage folder. Users of MSMQ now require write access to this folder, a privilege typically reserved for administrators. Consequently, attempts to send messages via MSMQ APIs may fail, resulting in resource errors.
Next steps
The situation is currently under investigation, and Microsoft has promised to share additional information as it becomes available. In the meantime, those affected have limited options: they can either perform a rollback to revert their systems to a previous state or manually uninstall the KB5071546 update.
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