- There was a nasty bug in the March update that broke a bunch of apps, including Edge, OneDrive, and some Office apps.
- Microsoft has now fixed this issue with an emergency patch for Windows 11
- Windows 11 users won’t get this fix unless they’ve enabled a certain option, and most will need to download it manually.
Microsoft was quick to fix a recent bug in Windows 11, which broke some important apps, although you’ll have to manually download the emergency patch as it won’t install automatically (for most people).
The issue, caused by the March update for Windows 11, meant that apps with Microsoft account logins, including Microsoft Edge, OneDrive, some Office apps, and the free version of Teams, would fail with an error telling the user that they were not connected to the internet (which was not the case).
Windows Latest reports that the fix has been rolled out as KB5085516 and has been rolled out to those with Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 who installed the March update.
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As this is an emergency or “out-of-band” update, outside the normal Windows update pattern, it is not the case that you will receive KB5085516 automatically.
You can do this, but only if you have enabled the “Get the latest updates as soon as they are available” option in Windows Update settings, as Microsoft explains in the patch notes.
If you haven’t enabled it – and most Windows 11 users won’t, as this means the PC receives optional (preview) updates – which may still be buggy, then you’ll need to get the patch yourself if you have broken apps due to this connectivity bug.
To do this, check for updates in the Windows Update panel (under Settings) and you will see KB5085516, after which you can click to download and install it.
After applying the patch, which typically takes about five minutes to download and the same time to install, according to Windows Latest, you should be ready to use the aforementioned applications.
Analysis: a necessarily quick solution
Microsoft fixed this issue quickly, as the company promised. The software giant said the bug would be fixed within days, and that’s exactly what happened: KB5085516 began rolling out two days ago, over the weekend.
So at this point, you should definitely see the patch if you check for it in Windows Update. However, you won’t see this fix if you haven’t installed the March update (KB5079473) yet, as you won’t need it (of course). Presumably, Microsoft will have directly applied this emergency patch to the March update, so anyone installing the latter in the future won’t encounter the bug.
Are you tempted to turn on “Get the latest updates as soon as they are available” because this should ensure that you receive emergency updates like this automatically? After all, if you don’t, it’s true that there’s a chance you’ll miss out on an important solution if you don’t read about it in an article like this. However, what you should keep in mind is that enabling this feature means that you will also receive all optional updates from Microsoft. These tend to be buggier than the release versions of the monthly updates, which, as we see with the March update, can already harbor some problematic gremlins.
So be aware of what you might sign up for, and I’d be wary of doing so unless you’re a more confident PC user.
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