- The KB5048239 patch for Windows 10 was first deployed in November 2024
- It has now been installed again as part of Microsoft’s January 2025 patch.
- However, this update is reported to install itself over and over again, and for a good number of Windows 10 users it seems
Have you ever had a Windows 10 (or Windows 11) update that couldn’t install? I’ve noticed that’s a problem that occurs relatively frequently, but a new twist on failed updates is a patch that keeps installing itself, despite having installed successfully in the past.
This is what is apparently happening with Windows 10, and the update in question is patch KB5048239, as Neowin reports.
It’s helpful to cover the backstory here, which is that KB5048239 was released to Windows 10 PCs (on 21H2 and 22H2) in November 2024 (among other patches), as a cure for problems with WinRE (recovery environment). Windows) which in turn have a long history.
However, last year, KB5048239 failed to install for some people because they did not have enough space on their Windows 10 recovery partition (minimum of 250 MB required).
Microsoft then issued a series of advice to affected users and attempted to smooth out the update, but it appears that Windows 10 is now attempting to deliver KB5048239 again. And again… and again… and (you get the idea).
Dean Wortmier tells us on Microsoft’s help forum, Answer’s.com, that: “This particular update was installed successfully in November 2024 and I’m trying to install it again today, over and over…, each time successfully.” ‘. .’”
Another complaint comes from Brian Lofthouse: “Hello everyone. I checked my updates this morning and KB5048239 was waiting to be installed again! I ran the troubleshooter and it installed again, I checked ‘View Updates’ and it had changed the date from yesterday to today! It’s like a merry-go-round. I can feel a migraine coming on!
In those two threads, 353 people clicked and said they “have the same question” to give you an idea of the magnitude of the impact here (at the time of writing). So this appears to be an issue affecting a few people running Windows 10.
Is there any way out of this mess?
As for a resolution for the ‘little update that wouldn’t give up’, the not-so-good news is that there doesn’t seem to be one.
Whatever people try to do, such as removing the older version of this update before allowing the newer one from January 2025 to install, makes no difference. They are still installing KB5048239 over and over again. Even those whose WinRE setup is fine (and the partition is large enough) are still affected by this debacle, as pointed out in this thread on the Ask Woody forums.
However, does it really matter to have this patch installed over and over again? Will it negatively affect your system? Probably not, but even if this isn’t a problem for Windows 10 running somewhere, it’s still annoying to see the same update downloaded and installed repeatedly. Those who don’t know what’s going on here may assume that their PC has some kind of serious bug (or even virus) and perhaps waste quite a bit of time trying to diagnose and understand what’s going on.
Hopefully Microsoft will make an announcement and I’ve contacted the company to find out (I’ll update this story with any response).
For now, though, all you can do is grin and bear it (or frown and bear it, rather). One option is to pause Windows 10 updates for as long as possible (with the side effect that you won’t receive other updates, of course, which could be bad news in itself). Otherwise, it’s just a matter of waiting for Microsoft to fix this issue (we’ve contacted the company for comment), which will hopefully happen fairly soon considering this is an issue affecting a non-trivial number. of Windows 10 users, I believe. I can say.
