Microsoft’s initial Windows 11 update of 2026 faces significant issues.

Microsoft’s initial update for Windows 11 in 2026 has turned out to be quite problematic. Following reports of shutdown issues on various systems, the company rolled out an emergency fix for the January 2026 update last weekend. Now, just a week later, they’ve had to issue a second unexpected out-of-band update to tackle crashes affecting OneDrive and Dropbox.

Additionally, Microsoft is looking into reports of boot failures that may be linked to the January 2026 security update. While the first shutdown issue was confined to machines running the Enterprise and IoT editions of Windows 11 version 23H2, the latest out-of-band update addresses crashes and unresponsiveness in OneDrive and Dropbox on the newer 24H2 and 25H2 versions of Windows 11.

Similar to the first emergency patch, this second out-of-band update was released over the weekend, leaving IT admins with a hectic Monday morning. Unfortunately, there may be more challenges on the horizon for these admins. Microsoft cautioned that the January 2026 update might also be causing boot failures on some devices. In a notice to IT professionals, the company stated it is investigating reports of boot failures with 24H2 and 25H2 after the January update was installed. Some PCs have experienced bluescreen errors with a UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME stop code, and Microsoft has indicated that these systems will require manual recovery.

The investigation into the boot failures is still ongoing, so it remains uncertain whether this update is definitively the source of the issues. A similar security update from the previous year was initially thought to be responsible for SSD problems, but it turned out that early versions of firmware and motherboard BIOS were the actual culprits.