Microsoft releases emergency patch for PrintNightmare vulnerability

Microsoft releases an emergency fix for its printing issues that affected Zebra and Dymo printers which got affected by KB5004945, KJB5004760, and KB5003690 updates. Though Microsoft released a patch for the PrintNightmare vulnerability recently, it wasn’t completely enough as it came with a issue and after the update users  weren’t able to print with their Dynamo and Zebra label and receipt printers via their USB.

Although at first this seems like the latest patches broke the mundane printer operations, Microsoft claimed that it was actually due to the June 2021 cumulative updates.

Microsoft Rollback feature for fixing the issue

Yesterday, Microsoft released the emergency fix for PrintNightmare Vulnerability affecting the Windows 10 20H2, 2004, and 21H1 for resolving the issue with printers. The fix is being rolled out through Microsoft’s Issue Rollback (KIR) feature, and it will take around 24 hours to be reflected for the user devices and businesses. Also for businesses, this can be resolved using the Group Policy configurations.

Here are some useful links to do it using GPO,

• How to use Group Policy for KIR configuration deployment

• General info about how to use Group Policy

Whenever Microsoft releases Windows Cumulative Updates the problem of new issues is prevalent and they fix such issues separately or using KIR feature. The below image shows how the KIR feature works via GPO deployments,

The catch is though this is a Windows update, the KIR doesn’t show as Windows Update for users and hence users need to check their Registry to see if they have had this update for their system. Users can do that by navigating to the Registry Editor and see if the update key exits and if yes, then the update is done.

The key should look like this,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FeatureManagement\Overrides\4\1861952651

If NO, then don’t panic it will take 24 hours and it will be available to your system shortly.