- Microsoft has rushed out an emergency patch for Windows 11
- It effectively replaces the March preview update, the rollout of which was suspended when a bug causing installation failures came to light
- Microsoft has been deploying a lot of emergency patches this year, which isn’t a great sign – although to be fair, these fixes have arrived quickly
Microsoft just fixed its most recent Windows 11 update, which was released in a broken form — at least for some people, for whom it failed to install — and was then pulled, before now being reinstated.
The repair came in the form of an emergency update that replaces the previous update for Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, as Bleeping Computer reports.
If you missed this, the preview update released at the end of March — as an optional download — had a bug whereby the installation process would fall over with the following error: “Some update files are missing or have problems. We’ll try to download the update again later. Error code: (0x80073712).”
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Yes, that’s one of those dreaded stop error codes, although in this case it made sense (unusually), as it seemingly pertains to a missing (or corrupt) file with an update.
This was evidently encountered by enough people that Microsoft pulled the update completely as it investigated the bug. The problem has now been resolved, and a new update — essentially the same optional update, just with the fix applied — is now out.
In short, you can download the preview update for March again, if you wish, and you shouldn’t run into the mentioned installation failure. The new emergency update is KB5086672, and it replaces the old buggy update which was KB5079391.
Analysis: a rash of emergency fixes
As you may realize, most people don’t install preview updates. I generally recommend avoiding these optional updates simply because they are still in preview, so technically that’s beta — albeit the final stage of testing.
Yes, these are being pushed to all Windows 11 PCs, and they’ll become a full update two weeks later — they are previews of the next incoming monthly update (in this case, the April update). However, technically they are still test releases, as we see with the increased chance of things going awry, something which occurs with some regularity (the March preview being a case very much in point).
The good news is that Microsoft caught the error, halted the update, and fixed it swiftly. I was actually pretty surprised to see the update was canned, to be honest, because we often see installation failures with Windows 11 (or Windows 10) updates — in full releases, not just previews — and they seem to be glossed over by Microsoft, frankly.
So, this is either evidence of the new attitude of Microsoft — which for 2026 is very much a call-to-arms to ‘fix everything’ — or it reflects the fact that the installation failures in this case were more widespread. Or indeed possibly a bit of both.
We can give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, then, but the reality of Windows 11’s start to 2026 is that it’s been shaky to say the least. A lot of bugs have been in evidence, and we’ve seen a whole lot of these emergency patches of late.
In fact, just before this rushed-out cure 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 required for bugs that caused other apps to crash (including Outlook), plus we’ve seen emergency fixes for Bluetooth issues and other problems specific to enterprise versions of Windows in-between those releases.
It has felt like a rather haphazard start to the year, then, but at least Microsoft has been responsive and quick to deliver the necessary reparations in these cases. Obviously, though, it’d be far more preferable to not have to push out emergency fixes in the first place, and I seriously hope that Microsoft’s broad campaign to fix what’s wrong with Windows 11 includes addressing shortfalls in its testing and QA procedures.
I know I’ve banged on about this in the past, but it really is a critical area for the reputation of Windows 11, albeit one that’ll likely demand a lot in the way of resources to get properly into shape.
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