A small security update for Windows 10 that tagged along with January’s main system update has been causing trouble for some users, prompting ‘installation failure’ errors on some PCs. Fortunately for those affected, Microsoft has now officially acknowledged the problem, and is working to fix it.
Last week we reported on Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 security patch, which caused more than a few headaches for IT admins, but was aimed at Windows 10 PC’s to fix a flaw that could potentially allow attackers to bypass encryption.
According to TweakTown, the error caused by that patch (labeled KB5034441) is due to unhelpful stop code present in the update, apparently caused by the recovery partition (WinRE) in Windows 10 not being sufficiently big enough. TweakTown quotes Microsoft admitting to the error and confirming that "It might be necessary to increase the size of the WinRE partition in order to avoid this issue and complete the installation. Note that 250 megabytes of free space is required in the recovery partition."
We're going to have to be patient
As we noted in our original article covering the KB5034441 update, if you’re really certain you want to get the patch installed, it can be done with a few changes to the system configuration.
This process requires quite a bit of time and care, however, and while we go through how you could possibly try and rectify it, we don’t really suggest that casual Windows users do so - at least, not until more information is available. Given how important the security patch is, we’re almost certainly going to see a new patch release very soon.
If you are yet to download the latest security update to your Windows 10 device, we would recommend holding off for a little while longer if you wish to avoid this kind of inconvenience. You’re better off waiting for Microsoft to rectify the problem itself, which will hopefully be a quick-fix solution.
