Microsoft suggests temporary registry hack for stricken smart card users

Microsoft accidentally broke several things in the October 2025 Windows Update, but smart card authentication was not one of them. That was intentionally broken, and the temporary workaround requires a registry hack. Redmond noted the issue last week after smart card authentication and other certificate operations started …

[dippy1]

Microsoft seem to be doing their utmost , and excelling, at the moment in pissing everyone off and trying to ensure as many as possible move off Windows.

Intentional do we think....or just incompetence?

[Pascal Monett]

Incompetence.

It's incompetence.

Something that Borkzilla's Scroogesque pile of money has disguised as competence for decades now (remember Ballmer ?) and, thanks to the endless amount of incompetent managers and CEOs buying into the scheme, Redmond continues to be able to pretend it knows what it is doing when any technical person of actual experience and competence (the two do go together, you know) will be able to demonstrate just how much that is completely wrong.

[jvf]

Yeah, but it was fun watching Ballmer perform. He was a great animated cheerleader for uncle Bill.

[Peter2]

Pure incompetence.

Microsofts Win11 installer recently informed me that my ~8 year old AMD Ryzen box (8 core/16 thread processor with 32GB of RAM) is good enough to run Win11 and wants me to go and buy a new PC.

I suppose I could play around and fool Windows into allowing me to install it on the perfectly adequate PC, but i've no particular intention of doing that. Instead, I considered that it's been about twenty years since I last dabbled with duel booting Linux and am now running Linux as my main desktop.

[theDeathOfRats]

"duel booting"

I found that an extremely accurate description when the other OS is one of the latest from Micros~1.

I'm keeping it for later use, if you don't mind. Thank you!

[elsergiovolador]

They no longer have to care. Once they have penetrated governments and crucial software for many industries only run on Windows, they can just do whatever they want or feel like doing.

Average person doesn't care. It's like being upset because it is cold and is raining. What are you going to do? Very few will move to a better climate, the rest will put a sweater on and grab an umbrella.

In the meantime, Microsoft could literally change login screen to picture of poo and make fart noises wherever you click. People will complain, but will still use it.

[Sub 20 Pilot]

I agree to a point. A lot of us have no choice. It is not a matter of not caring. I use several engineering programs that will only run on windows, I run autocad. These will not run on Linux. I have spent a lot of time trying to get things to work with emulators etc over the years. That costs me work and money and still does not work.

What boils my actual fucking piss on most forums like the Reg, Ars etc is the number of ignorant smug posts from people who use Linux as their OS and basically pick up email and watch youtube so assum it should do for everyone else.

I am not criticising your post by the way, I read most of your post as you are one of the normal people posting here whose opinions I respect and that I enjoy reading. This is a rant against the whole trope of assuming that all of us who use windows do so because we are stupid and lazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I use several engineering programs that will only run on windows,

...And in the passed months, what effort have you put in to nudge your software suppliers to offer a non-windows version?

(Anon for reasons)

[GNU Enjoyer]

Linux isn't even an OS

I run GNU/GNU Linux-libre as my OS and don't watch youtube and it does everything I want it to do - it even does endless things proprietary OS's cannot do.

This includes CAD - as it executes the free software FreeCAD, that respects my freedom just fine (I don't have skill issues, so I can get things done even if doing so is harder - although in most cases it's easier).

All users of windows are suckers and it is factual that many of them are stupid, as many of them mostly run a web browser and maybe need to do a few office tasks that are easier in libreoffice.

It's odd to allow work to infringe upon most of your life, by only having a WC.

windows users certainly aren't lazy, as getting even basic things done on windows takes a serious amount of work.

Other than "business software" handcuffed to windows, the main convenience reason to run windows anymore would be proprietary games (bluray playback support is being removed and I suspect "online streaming" support at decent resolutions will eventually be curtailed for 10 and require certain hardware with certain handcuffs for 11) - but it seems that GNU/Linux now runs most proprietary games more conveniently and better now? (despite how doing so soils what should be a free OS with more proprietary software),

[DS999]

It is amazing

How in the past year with the expiration of Windows 10 drawing closer, that with every month Microsoft seemed to have accelerated the borkage in Windows 11. You'd think they'd want that to be as stable as possible - at least stable enough it isn't in the news constantly for something important that broke with the latest update. Now they're breaking things on purpose??

[Terry 6]

Re: It is amazing

at least stable enough it isn't in the news

Which is part of the problem -if not all of it. It's seldom in the news

Ordinary users are seldom aware and corporate users only know at a techie level, not a CEO level. The news outlets don't bother to report it, because no one cares. And no one cares because the news outlets don't bother to report it.

[David Hicklin]

Re: It is amazing

And this months Windows10 updates seem to be huge, may machines took ages to apply them...

[GNU Enjoyer]

The whole idea

is that no matter what microsoft does, no matter what breaks, no matter that many things have never worked, no matter how many serfs are "pissed off", the serf's simply don't leave the abusive relationship.

[nobody who matters]

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" (N.Bonaparte C~1774 - obviously he didn't say it in English!)

[Anonymous Coward]

oh ffs

MS was right, windows 10 really will be the last version of windows for an awful lot of people.

[cookieMonster]

Broken, by design

Sums up the windows experience perfectly.

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: Broken, by design

Only M$ could deliberately break something that many use as a security feature.

What an absolute disgrce

[Homo.Sapien.Floridanus]

Tuvok : Captain, shields are down, life support is off-line.

Paris: we lost artificial gravity on decks 6 and 7!

Torres: warp core plasma is overheating!

Neelix: What is it captain, new weapon from the Borg, Kazon?

Janeway: no, today is second Tuesday.

[John_3_16]

Zorin & Linux appreciates M$ for expansion help via Windows extinctions & update f**kups...

Zorin recorded 100,000 downloads during the 2 days following Win10's final day of updates without ESU contracts. 70,000 plus were from Microsoft machines. That is just one distro reporting. Following the continued borkings of all Window's OSes the numbers of new Linux converts will only continue to climb. I am a hardcore Win7 user still receiving monthly security updates that do end in Jan 2026. My secondary OS for 3 years has been Zorin. Zorin 18 becomes my primary in Feb 2026. Thank you, M$, for making all of this Linux success possible. It is said by some that the easiest way to teach a child how to swim is to throw them into the deep end of the pool where they will immediately learn to swim or die. Looks like a philosophy followed by M$ with their customers. For a lot of us M$'s EOL really means RIP M$. You are now dead to us.

[SVD_NL]

Smart cards are used by the enterprise segment (almost) exclusively. Two things are true about them: 1. Their PCs will be managed and 2. They're likely to have systems that require very specific protocols/features.

Why the hell did they just disable it silently when it's apparently possible to toggle with a registry hack? Just put it in the security baseline, add a policy to lock this down, and communicate the risks. In a year you change the default to having this mitigation turned on, and sometime in the future when your vast amounts of telemetry tell you no one is using the mitigation, you remove the ability to turn off the mitigation altogether.

It's not that difficult...

[David Hicklin]

Thats windows 10 sorted then

> The bad news is that the hack will only work until the April 2026 Windows updates

Unless you have ESU then the workaround will continue for ever...unless M$ are lying about getting updates......