Some Windows 11 users reported that Microsoft’s December cumulative update caused installation failures and other issues

According to news from IT House on December 21, some Win11 users reported that after upgrading the cumulative updates of KB5021255 (applicable to 22H2) and KB5021234 (applicable to 21H2), major problems occurred in the system. However, Microsoft officials have not yet admitted that there are problems with the cumulative updates released on the two December Patch Tuesday events.

Installation fails with error 0x800f081f

IT Home learned that, according to user feedback, users reported that they could not install normally when they tried to download the KB5021255 and KB5021234 cumulative updates. When the installation fails, the user receives a nonsensical error without specifying exactly what caused it.

In addition, some users receive the error code 0x800f081f after the update fails, and will roll back to the previous version after the installation fails, but no more details are provided.

Foreign science and technology media Windows Lastest found through investigation that Win11 22H2 feature update users reported that there were many problems with installation failures. Although there were also 21H2, there were not many related reports.

“I have a Surface Book 2 with Windows 11 22H2. KB5021255 cannot be updated via Windows Update or installed from the standalone installer downloaded from the Windows Update Catalog with error 0x800f081f,” one user noted.

AMD CPU device freezes

In addition to the failure of the installation, some users reported serious performance problems after the installation. AMD CPUs freeze for several minutes after an upgrade. A user reported that AMD hardware including Ryzen 5 4600GE was affected, but Win11 21H2 with the same CPU was not affected.

Conflicts with third-party apps that modify the start menu and taskbar

In addition, third-party applications that modify the Start menu and taskbar will not function properly after installing the two cumulative updates mentioned above. One user reported: “After I try to click the start icon, the corresponding menu does not pop up. I checked the CrashDumps folder and saw: ‘StartMenuExperienceHost.exe.10884.dmp'”.

In this case, a third-party app called “Explorer Patcher” appears to be conflicting with Windows 11’s December Update, which could break the Start menu.

If the Start menu doesn’t work, press Windows + R and type “control panel”. In Control Panel, go to Programs and Features and look for “Explorer Patcher” or a similar application. Finally, click the “Uninstall” button.