This Windows 11 update was sending people to ‘reboot hell’ before Microsoft stepped in
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A new Windows 11 update is available. Generally, this is a good thing. In fact, we recently reported that the latest Windows 11 update brings new improvements, but it looks like the very same update has a critical flaw. Reports show that Microsoft has been forced to stop rolling out the new update as it is putting some users in what’s known as ‘reboot hell’ – an endless loop of rebooting without much avail.
Despite bringing a few neat features such as new emojis or streamlined 7-Zip archiving support, we’d have to recommend against going ahead with this optional update for now (if you still have access it to). This comes just ahead of the cumulative July 2024 update next month.
New KB5039302 update was causing problems
The KB5039302 update, which you can read the full patch notes for here, is available for users on Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2 machines. As we said above, this is an optional update – so there’s no need to rush into downloading, though you shouldn’t be at risk if you haven’t opted into any Windows updates lately. That’s because Microsoft has already picked up on the issue, pausing the update to stop it from affecting more users.
A report from Neowin tells us that the ‘reboot hell’ bug could cause your PC to be forever trying to boot, failing, rebooting – and the cycle continues. The only way of stopping this is trying to force recovery mode, or simply unplugging it (though we’d always recommend against the latter).
What’s the cause of this?
Microsoft is now investigating the root cause, but it reportedly has something to do with users running a virtual machine. This is a common practice for some developers or enthusiasts who wish to emulate another OS inside of Windows.
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Looking at an article on Microsoft’s website, we can see that they’ve listed a number of ‘Known issues’, confirming that “the June non-security preview update might cause devices to restart repeatedly”. This is referencing the KB5039302 update and reads “this issue is more likely to affect devices utilizing virtual machines and nested virtualization features”.
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