The latest updates for Windows Server for January has caused multiple issues across the board for Microsoft’s brand of server software. Reports of crashes, loss of data and boot loops are the current talk of the town in the various subreddits and forums for system administrators as they try to recover things.
Luckily, the smart Alecs over at the SysAdmin subreddit has already gotten to the bottom of it and it appears to be centralised around three updates across each version. The affected versions are:
- KB5009624 or KB5009595 – Server 2012
- KB5009546 – Server 2016
- KB5009557 – Server 2019
The updates were just routine for the operating system, with Microsoft stopping the rollout of the updates before it hit all servers across the globe using these versions. If you have updated to these versions and are still experiencing issues, you might want to run the following commands and then redo the update at another point.
Open the command line and then run these commands, followed by a restart. One user did report that it took 15 or so minutes for the server to allow them to get past the 100% mark on the uninstall and reload.
2012r2: wusa /uninstall /kb:5009624 or wusa /uninstall /kb:5009595
2016: wusa /uninstall /kb:5009546
2019: wusa /uninstall /kb:5009557
If you are currently in a bootloop, you’ll want to look into either disconnecting the Exchange Server or any affected DCs, which should allow you to load in without it continuing to reboot.
