Notification – but no explanation – for the “Wi-Fi doesn’t have a valid IP configuration” bug

As far as I know, this is unprecedented.

Microsoft has not only acknowledge the bug I talked about yesterday – the one that knocks out Wi-Fi on Windows 10 Anniversary Update machines – they’ve gone so far as to put a banner at the top of the Windows 10 Update History page.

As mentioned in that article, the easiest way to fix the problem (as best I can tell) is to use the technique posited by SIBIT-UK on the Microsoft Answers Forum:

Hold down the shift key and then perform a shutdown from the start menu in the normal way – do not let go of the shift key until off.

That seems to reset the IP address, bypassing Fast Startup, correcting the bug that sets the IP address to 169.x.x.x.

We still have no official explanation from Microsoft and no solution to the problem, other than manually restarting. Our own ch100 has posed an interesting theory for the sudden appearance of the bug:

A rogue scheduled task triggered on Wednesday?
This may explain the rush to release the CU containing the fix early.
Just speculation

I continue to get reports that some Win10 1607 users are NOT seeing KB 3201845, the cumulative update for 1607 released yesterday. KB 3201845 and version 14393.479 aren’t listed on the Win10 Update History page although the patch rolled out early Friday morning.

I’m completely baffled. KB 3201845 didn’t cause the problem. Best I can tell, it doesn’t solve the problem either. (If you’ve seen differently, I’d love to hear about it!) I have no idea why KB 3201845/14393.479 aren’t on the official update list. And a banner at the top of an update history page warning folks to bypass Fast Startup… I’m scratching my head and other parts of my anatomy.

This may be the biggest Win10 updating screw-up to date. Let’s see how it unfolds.

UPDATE: It may not be a Win10-specific problem. MikefromMarkham notes in the comments that the banner now appears on both the Win7 update page and the Win8.1 update page.

I wonder how many tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars have been wasted on this bug.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I hear from a very reliable source that KB 3201845 just kicks a reboot, and doesn’t fix the underlying problem.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Abbodi notes in the comments that EVERY support.microsoft.com page sports that banner (although, oddly, the answers.microsoft.com pages don’t). Man. I’ve never seen anything even remotely close to this. Lonnie_L’s post now has 43,000 views (and no comments because comments are closed).

YAAU: Most of the reports I’ve seen are with Win10 version 1607, but others claim to have internet connections that drop mysteriously, with a 169.x.x.x assigned IP address. For most people the connection doesn’t die immediately after a return from hibernation – it takes a few minutes. Still no description from Microsoft, no explanation, and their only fix is the one linked to above. But there’s absolutely no question that KB 3201845 (which still isn’t documented on the Win10 update history page) is NOT the source of the problem, in spite of what you may have read. Installing KB 3201845 may provide temporary relief, as it forces a restart. But it doesn’t fix the core problem – which remains elusive, undocumented, and quite pervasive.