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Windows-10

Last week, Microsoft pushed an update to Windows 10 that broke DHCP and knocked some users offline until they rebooted their systems. The update is believed to take been part of cumulative update KB 3201845, which was released on December 9. After it was released, multiple European users reported beingness kicked offline. It's not clear if the problem was isolated to Europe or not, merely Microsoft is displaying a global imprint that declares all users with Cyberspace connectivity problems should restart (not shut down) their hardware.

Windows-Update-1

Yesterday, Microsoft released KB3206632, which Ars Technica believes might have fixed the issue. The new patch contains the following annotation: "Addressed a service crash in CDPSVC [Connected Devices Platform Service] that in some situations could pb to the machine non beingness able to acquire an IP address." If you look upwards the CDPSVC, it's described as follows: "This service is used for Connected Devices and Universal Glass scenarios." Continued devices is cocky-explanatory, but we haven't been able to find a definition for what "Universal Glass" is.

Either style, the update broke Windows 10'southward power to configure DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). DHCP is the protocol that distributes network configuration data to all the relevant devices on the network and handles automatically assigning IP addresses, for example. You don't need a DHCP server to access the Cyberspace, only nearly home networks are configured to await one, and the average user probably isn't comfy with the process of mapping out static IPs to each device on the network.

In this case, the problem can exist solved with a simple "ipconfig /release" command, followed by "ipconfig /renew". Some users are also reporting that this is fix is insufficient, and a separate set of commands are also needed, specifically: "netsh int ip reset" followed by "ipconfig /flushdns". Combined, these should resolve any issues you experience, and allow an affected organisation to reconnect to the Internet and download the advisable patch.

The larger issue here, of course, is that these kinds of mistakes take go a regular part of the Windows x update procedure. In the by 12 months, we've seen multiple updates that variously bricked systems, broke Net connectivity, or acquired random crashes when ordinary USB devices (Kindles, in this instance) were plugged into the system. That'southward not even counting the malware-like activity of the last few months of the "Get Windows 10" campaign and the ill-will that caused towards Microsoft.

Every operating system has these kinds of issues from time to time, including previous versions of Windows. This isn't the first fourth dimension Microsoft has had to push a patch to resolve issues information technology caused for itself with a previous update, and this kind of problem occasionally hits Linux and Apple users as well. But even after allowing for all of those factors, Windows x seems to take had more bug with weird corner cases, random bugs, and issues cropping up that the company'due south Fast Ring / Slow Ring early adopter update system simply hasn't been able to resolve.

One potential reason for this is the type of Bone testing Microsoft encourages its early adopters to engage in. If y'all're in the fast ring, Microsoft recommends y'all not test your primary organisation and that you test inside a virtual auto when possible. In that location'south a lot of things that tin can exist checked that mode, but certain issues — similar USB device verification, for instance — probably don't happen when users are running within a VM.

To date, Microsoft has all the same to denote any substantive changes to its policies that would close these gaps.