Microsoft’s embarrassing Windows 11 printer fail finally gets fixed – but is it too late?
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Microsoft has officially marked a frustrating printer bug as fixed, and the people who couldn’t upgrade to Windows 11 22H2 because of the compatibility issue will no doubt be happy to hear that.
You may remember this very tricky bug that surfaced in late September 2022 forcing printers to revert to their default settings. Many key features weren’t available by default – we’re talking double-sided printing, higher resolutions and maybe even colour, which could obviously be major stumbling blocks.
The good news is that if Newwin (opens in new tab) noticed, Microsoft officially marked the issue as resolved a few days ago (November 18). In fact, the security-blocking devices that could encounter this bug were removed a week earlier – allowing those machines to update to Windows 11 22H2 – although it may take some time for the upgrade to come through.
However, at this point, any machine with a connected printer that could fall prey to this bug should be able to go ahead and successfully upgrade to 22H2 without waiting.
Microsoft noticed (opens in new tab)To: “Any printer still affected by this issue should now be automatically resolved during the upgrade to Windows 11, version 22H2.”
Analysis: A rocky road, for sure
This has been a bit of a rough road for those with an affected printer who of course want to upgrade to Windows 11 22H2 as the bug has been hanging around for quite some time. As noted, it had been two months since it first came to our attention, so this was hardly a quick fix.
With plenty of questions about the prevalence of Windows 10 bugs in the past, and with Windows 11 apparently continuing to have a worrying amount of quality assurance issues, the whole thing isn’t looking good for Microsoft. Yes, we’ve beaten this drum many times before, but we’ll continue to do so as bugs like this printer-related gremlin — or other bugs like File Explorer crashes or Windows 11 PCs slow down — continue to pop up way too often for our liking.
If you’ve been bothered by a gremlin running Microsoft’s latest operating system, be sure to check out our guide to troubleshooting common Windows 11 issues.