Windows 10 Out-Of-Band Update Fixes Printer BSOD Bug

The Blue Screen of Death, more popular by its acronym BSOD, is amusingly one of Microsoft's long-lasting legacies, no matter which version of Windows it releases. The dreaded error message, which disrespectfully halts anything you may have been doing, can be triggered by almost seemingly random causes, from copying files to running some programs. The latest trigger happened to be caused by simply trying to print. Fortunately, the situation has gotten so out of hand that Microsoft decided to push out the fix way ahead of schedule.

BSODs usually take the whole operating system down when certain operations hit a violation or bug in the Windows code. Unfortunately, those reasons can be as arcade as the error messages these blue screens show panicking users. In this latest scenario, for example, all that users know is that they were trying to use their printer as normal before being jumped at by this nefarious screen.

Microsoft became aware of the issue and even published a temporary workaround for those affected by it. A fix would be coming but, under normal circumstances, users would have had to wait for the next "Update Tuesday" before it becomes available to the public. Some users, especially those in businesses, probably wouldn't have been able to wait for that day before losing precious time.

Microsoft just issued an out-of-band update exactly for that, meaning that it is immediately available. Unfortunately, the company doesn't give any information on what caused the bug in the first place, nor which specific printers and apps may trigger the BSOD. Perhaps it is hoping that everyone just simply keeps their PC up-to-date every single day.

One word of caution, the patch itself brings with it another known issue that could affect certain users under very specific conditions. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be severe enough to warrant yet another patch (that may come next week) and the bulletin does include a workaround for those that get hit by it.