Tech

Blue Screen of the day—update crashes Windows 10 PCs on print

This is the BSOD victim of this week's Windows Update Woes seen after any attempt to print, from any application.

Enlarge / This is the BSOD victim of this week’s Windows Update Woes seen after any attempt to print, from any application. (credit: Teri Sheehan)

A Microsoft Windows Update is wreaking havoc with printers worldwide this week—KB50000802 (for newer Windows 10 builds; older Windows 10 and Server builds may have a KB ending in 808 or 822 instead) was intended to provide updates to security “when Windows performs basic operations,” but the update crashes some print drivers due to overflowing a GDI Object limit of 10,000.

The bug afflicts a wide range of printers and print drivers—we can confirm having seen the issue on a Windows 10 2004 PC, which crashes with APC_INDEX_MISMATCH (photo above) after printing to any of several models of Kyocera printer (some local, some network).

If you’re afflicted with this bug yourself, you can get some relief by uninstalling KB50000802 until Microsoft comes out with a fixed update, presumably by April’s Patch Tuesday.

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