Microsoft has released emergency Windows out-of-band updates to resolve a known issue breaking reset and recovery operations after installing the August 2025 Windows security updates.
As the company confirmed when it acknowledged the bug on Monday, these problems impact systems running both Windows 10 and older versions of Windows 11.
The list of buggy updates causing these recovery problems includes KB5063875 (Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 11 22H2), KB5063709 (Windows 10 22H2, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021, and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021), and KB5063877 (Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019, Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019).
Installing this month's security updates will cause attempts to reset or recover the device to fail for users who want to reinstall their systems while keeping their files using 'Reset my PC', or reinstall it and keep their files, apps, and settings using the 'Fix problems using Windows Update ' tool.
This known issue may also affect IT professionals who want to remotely reset devices via the RemoteWipe configuration service provider (RemoteWipe CSP).
On Tuesday evening, one day after confirming this known issue, Redmond released the following emergency updates to address it and urged those who had not yet deployed this month's updates to install the out-of-band ones instead:
KB5066189 (Windows 11, versions 23H2 and 22H2),
KB5066188 (Windows 10 22H2, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021, and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021),
KB5066187 (Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2019).
"A non-security out-of-band (OOB) update was released today, August 19, 2025, to address this issue. This is a cumulative update, so you do not need to apply any previous updates before installing this update, as it supersedes all previous updates for affected versions," the company said.
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