- Microsoft quickly released an emergency patch for Windows 11
- It replaces the March preview update, the release of which was halted when a bug causing installation failure appeared.
- Microsoft has been shipping a lot of hotfixes this year, which is not a good sign – although it should be, these fixes have arrived quickly.
Microsoft recently fixed the most recent Windows 11 update, which was released in a broken way – at least for some people, it failed to install – and then it was pulled, before being restored.
The fix came in the form of an emergency update that replaces the previous Windows 11 update 25H2 and 24H2, as Bleeping Computer reports.
In case you missed it, the preview update released at the end of March – as an optional download – had a bug where the installation process would crash with the following error: “Some update files are not available or have problems. We will try to download the update again later. Error code: (0x80073712).”
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Yes, that’s one of those dreaded configuration error codes, although this time it made sense (unusual), as it seems to be about a missing (or corrupted) update file.
This was apparently encountered by enough people that Microsoft pulled the update altogether as it investigated the bug. The issue has now been resolved, and a new update – actually the same optional update, since the fix has been applied – is now out.
In short, you can download the March preview update again, if you like, and you shouldn’t encounter the mentioned installation failure. The new emergency update is KB5086672, and it replaces the older buggy update that was KB5079391.
Analysis: contingency planning
As you can see, most people don’t install preview updates. I generally recommend avoiding these optional updates simply because they’re still in preview, so technically that’s beta – even though it’s the last phase of testing.
Yes, these are being pushed to all Windows 11 PCs, and will be a full update two weeks later – they’re previews for the next monthly update we’re getting (in this case, the April update). However, technically the tests are still being released, as we can see with the increased possibility of things going wrong, something that happens regularly (the March preview is a very important issue).
The good news is that Microsoft caught the bug, stopped the update, and quickly fixed it. I was actually very surprised to see the update canned, to be honest, because we often see the failure to install with Windows 11 (or Windows 10) updates – in the full release, not just the preview – and it seems that they were exposed by Microsoft, frankly.
Therefore, this can be evidence of Microsoft’s new attitude – which in 2026 will be a call to arms to ‘fix everything’ – or it shows the fact that the installation failure in this case was very widespread. Or maybe a bit of both.
We can give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, then, but the fact that Windows 11’s launch in 2026 was tempting to say the least. A lot of bugs have been in evidence, and we’ve seen a lot of these bugs as of late.
In fact, just before this quick fix for the latest preview update, we saw another emergency fix in March for an unhelpful bug that broke a bunch of apps (like OneDrive and Edge). And in January, another emergency patch was needed for bugs that caused some apps to crash (including Outlook), and we saw emergency fixes for Bluetooth issues and other issues specific to business versions of Windows among those released.
It felt like an unorganized start to the year, but at least Microsoft responded and was quick to deliver the necessary compensations in these situations. Obviously, however, it would be much better not to dismiss emergency fixes in the first place, and I have high hopes that Microsoft’s extensive campaign to fix what is wrong with Windows 11 includes addressing the shortcomings in its testing and QA processes.
I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but it’s actually a critical area of Windows 11’s reputation, even if one will need a lot in the way of resources to shape it properly.
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