Yet again, the latest Patch Tuesday update rolled out by Microsoft this May 2019 has resulted to personal computers acting up. The software giant has confirmed that users that tried to restore their PCs following the update installation ended up with a serious OS glitch.
The restore process in this particular case will not be completed due to "Stop Error 0xc000021a," which Microsoft said is essentially Windows 10 going into a protection mode. As a result, the system will not reboot after an attempt to walk back to the previous state of the operating system. Potentially, the problem can affect all Windows 10 users.
"The issue affects all Windows machines where system protection is turned on and a system restore point has been created prior to installing one or more Windows 10 updates," Bleeping Computer said in a report.
It's not the first time that Patch Tuesday had unintentionally spawned serious headaches for Windows 10 users. This was the case too when Microsoft deployed its monthly updates last month, and according to Forbes, a number of systems were rendered unusable due to reboot freezing.
Ironically, the fiasco came upon no thanks to the delivered fixes that were meant to secure Windows 10. Instead, users were made to deal with a system breakdown, which Microsoft blamed on conflicting drivers and ensuing malfunction.
"Because the driver versions do not match the versions of the restored catalog files the restart process stops," Forbes reported the company as saying in explaining what prompted the problem.
Thankfully though, there is an easy fix. Per the same report, two consecutive failed system boots will lead one to the Windows Recovery Environment and from which the following menu path should be taken: Troubleshoot>Advanced options>More recovery options>Startup settings>Restart now.
In the last option, users will be asked to tick on preferred startup settings and before doing so they need to select "Disable driver signature enforcement." Microsoft said the shortcut to this can be accessed by pressing F7 then the normal reboot will happen en route to the completion of the restore procedure.
Most importantly, users can dodge being bothered by the glitch by avoiding the May Patch Tuesday for now. Or if they already did install the patches, it's best not to restore the system now and wait out for the next Windows 10 Feature Upgrade as the best solution to the problem.
That would be the Windows 10 19H1 version 1903, which Microsoft is supposed to be seeding anytime now. The new build was originally scheduled to disperse last April but in order to minimize bugs and other issues, the company decided for a May 2019 update rollout.
