By Susan Bradley • Comment about this alert

Last week, Microsoft announced that Windows 11 24H2 is now “broadly available.”

This notice was contained in the Microsoft Learn post Windows 11, version 24H2 known issues and notifications.

Except for my continuing recommendation not to install 24H2, I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level to 4. There are some problems, but they are manageable. Go ahead and patch.

Microsoft’s language in the Learn post was more direct than usual and included Windows 10 in the mix:

Starting this week, we are expanding this latest Windows version’s phased rollout. We are gradually offering this update also to eligible devices running Windows 10, version 22H2.

Microsoft is focusing its announcement on PCs running Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 10 22H2. To be fair, Redmond isn’t exactly pushing the update without your permission. It’s just that it makes the “No thanks, I’ll pass” button very small and locates it at the bottom of the dialog offering the update.

For Windows 10 — and as usual — the update will be offered only to PCs meeting Windows 11’s hardware requirements. There are a lot of posts and videos out there claiming that Microsoft relaxed those requirements, even going so far as to suggest that Windows 11 can be installed on any PC. The truth? Nothing has changed. Windows 11 still has the same hardware requirements. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably reacting to clickbait.

Let me repeat that I approve of patches for Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 23H2, but I do not yet recommend installing Windows 11 24H2. I realize that many of you have recently purchased new PCs that were delivered with Windows 11 24H2. So let me also make clear that I do not recommend the painful process of attempting to retreat to 23H2. That would require a messy clean install. As I’ve said before, if you’re already running 24H2, stay there.

However, be aware of a few issues.

For one, the installation of Windows 11 24H2 will cause computers to no longer have access to the Internet, as noted in the forum post . No amount of removing the driver or re-adding the driver will fix the issue. The only identified workaround is to use several commands, as noted in the forum post Networking breaks after install of 24H2 relating to WinHTTPAutoProxySvc. Microsoft has not yet acknowledged this problem, and it seems to be isolated to PCs in business settings.

Another unacknowledged bug associated with the above networking problem is that it does not send the DHCP option 77. However, Microsoft has acknowledged this in a private support incident.

Windows 10 22H2 isn’t quite error free for the month of January. KB5049981 notes that event 7023 is found in the event logs on Windows 10 22H2 and Server 2022. This is a cosmetic bug — it won’t hurt your machine. If you see it in your event viewer, you can safely ignore it. I can live with cosmetic bugs. I can’t live with feature releases that break networking.

If you are in a home environment and use a mixture of Windows 10, Windows 11, and network-attached storage (NAS), be aware of another side effect that may impact you — SMB signing. If you have set up your network with guest authentication, you may find yourself unable to see other network locations as a result of upgrading to 24H2. As Microsoft points out:

SMB signing is required by default for Windows 11, version 24H2, Windows Server 2025, and later builds which results in compatibility issues with guest authentication if signing doesn’t succeed.

To resolve this on a Windows 11 24H2 Pro machine, run the local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc). In the left pane, navigate to Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Lanman Workstation. In the right pane, double-click Enable insecure guest logons, select Enabled, then select OK.

I do not recommend this for a small business network — only for a home network where you  trust everyone. For a peer-to-peer network at the office, it is much better to set up appropriate usernames and permissions on the shared peer computer systems.

It’s expected that Apple’s 18.3 release will be out this week. Whenever there is a new “big” release from Apple, I always hold back a bit and wait for the “plus 1.” If you recall, 18.3 will bring Visual Intelligence upgrades to iPhone 16 models. You can add an event to the Calendar app from a poster or flyer. Visual intelligence is available only on iPhone 16.

Another of the undocumented issues in the January releases is KB5049235 for SQL 2019. The update fails to install non-interactively because it requires a EULA acceptance. You can work around the issue by manually installing the update. As noted:

Microsoft confirmed the SQL update did not have Auto-Accept EULA on. Manually install your SQL CU and use your existing process to re-run the deployment.

I’ve also seen that on a couple of my systems, which did not receive the .NET security updates until after I rebooted for the main January security update. Whenever a system is misbehaving and you’ve recently installed updates, make sure to either force a second reboot or urge those using the misbehaving machines to do a second reboot. From systems that accidentally logged in to temporary profiles, to updates that finally clear out on the second reboot, it’s amazing how just rebooting again will make a system behave.

Microsoft’s Office 365 patches triggered issues on Server 2016 servers. Microsoft has since fixed the issue — but at the time, the only “fix” was to roll back to the December build of Microsoft 365. Don’t forget that with Microsoft 365 you can’t just uninstall patches — it’s a redeploy back to the prior month.

If you have Fortinet firewalls in your network, make sure you review the company’s recent advisories. Fifteen vulnerabilities are being fixed, some of which are being used in zero-day attacks. We’ve even seen attackers grab entire configurations and post their content on the Web.

Bottom line: While you are patching those operating systems this month, don’t forget to review your edge devices. Those attackers are going after that software more than ever.

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Susan Bradley is the publisher of the AskWoody newsletters.