Microsoft cancels Patch Tuesday for some Dell users over surprise shutdowns, overheating devices

UPDATED Patch Tuesday was followed by Oopsie Wednesday for some Dell customers, with Microsoft slamming on the update brakes after the hardware maker reported some problems. Yesterday was Microsoft's monthly security update for Windows. This month was, by all accounts, a bit of a doozy with a record-breaking number of CVEs …

[Mishak]

Not a Dell

But it took my work HP over 3 hours to apply the updates :-(

I guess I'm lucky it still works (as slowly as ever).

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Not a Dell

Recently built 3x identical (new to me) laptops.. One of them would not take a patch last month, so tried this months patches and after hours it fails.

The old reset of Windows Update does nothing. I thought it maybe the efi partition (these all have 200MB, so thought about increasing to 500MB - that ain't fun)

In the end a Recovery patch / repair seems to have worked, but that has been running ALL afternoon and only rebooted about 30 mins ago.

[DoctorPaul]

Re: Not a Dell

Updated two Win10 boxes and a Win11 laptop yesterday and seem to have got away with it, glad I upgraded to a fibre connection a few months ago though!

In associated news I also received the email from M$ to say that the Win10 boxes will get ESU until October 2027. Just trying to work out whether that's good or bad news.

Edit: as of today all the forum pages are now only occupying the left third of the screen on my Android tablet, way to go with that site redesign El Reg!

[IGotOut]

Good job it wasn't...

..one of the largest PC manufacturers with some of the most generic hardware out there, otherwise it may have affected more than the usual "small number".

Microslop. Your No1 go to unstable software company.

[Paul Herber]

Re: Good job it wasn't...

Unstable Down. Sounds like some hills near Luton.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dell... some of the most generic hardware out there

Well they weren't always that way.

I bought a Dell tower PC in 2006? with XP on it. I was planning to put Linux on it and use it and having it be my home NAS as it had hardware disk mirroring. Turned out they had non standard interrupts or something. So I was using XP way past it's EOL so I still had a place to put my backups (only on to copy files to or from it). I finally went back to trying to find a Linux that would run on it and finally found one, but then I couldn't get it to network properly so continued using XP till the PC died.

[deeredd]

Re: Dell... some of the most generic hardware out there

My experience of Dell and back in the day Compaq/HP was that they would always have some little twist: weird motherboard issue, odd Ethernet, wireless or disk controller or something. Presumably to shave a few quid off the cost.

And if you tried to install another OS without good prep you would be in to doodoo.

Also if you opened them up they were always as ugly as fuck inside with some vital part jammed under something else and either held together with adamantium or spit.

[[e-mail]]

Re: Dell... some of the most generic hardware out there

I only encountered weirdness on HP, like AV software not running or unable to install MS Office.

I try to avoid HP for this reason.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Dell... some of the most generic hardware out there

In the late 1990's we had a "corporate deal" with Dell for PC's (we had favoured Compaq before then) and got a job lot of Desktop PC's with a 200MHz Pentium and a miserable amount of Ram running NT4 and Office 97 (I think - memory is getting hazy that far back).

They were great at first but soon started running slowly, so I was asked if they could be "upgraded" at all.

Nope, not chance. CPU soldered in, single memory slot so even upgrading the memory would result in all the old chips dumped. And the motherboard was totally non-standard form factor with a non-standard form factor PSU with (of course) a non-standard connector plug/socket to the motherboard.

Maybe that is why the "deal" looked so cheap!

[tony72]

That possibly explains it

I had a user yesterday complaining that his laptop fan had been on high basically all day. No new software, not doing anything different. I'll see if that update was installed, but it would seem to be a bit of a coincidence otherwise.

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: That possibly explains it

"...poor performance, increased heat, and battery drain..."

Yeah, but that's standard performance on my Dell laptop bought only a year ago with its Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor and Win 11 crap.

[original_rwg]

Validation and quality

"and can cause surprise shutdowns, overheating, and performance problems does not speak well of the company's validation and quality procedures"

Well, at least there's someone who believes they have such a thing....

[K555]

Re: Validation and quality

If I'm running Windows on a laptop I might get shutdowns, overheating and performance problems but I'm way beyond being surprised by them.

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: Validation and quality

Well, at least there's someone who believes they have such a thing....

The same people who believe in the tooth fairy?

[Donn Bly]

Re: Validation and quality

Of course they _HAVE_ validation and quality procedures, but having them and following them are two very different things. The old policy of "don't ship it until it works" from the engineers of old has been replaced with a culture of releasing anything that compiles cleanly, or at least compiles without too many warnings.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Validation and quality

The old policy was "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run".

Micro$haft has NEVER been a quality company.

[stiine]

Re: Validation and quality

I don't think they have their logging level set to show warnings...If they're logging at all.

[Blackjack]

Even Windows Vista wasn't this bad.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

You never used Vista SP0 obviously... SP1 and later I agree.

[Blackjack]

Try to install Windows 11 without Rufus or without being in the Eurozone. At least Vista install wasn't torture.

[Ken Hagan]

No. Vista was truly awful.

I maintained a Vista box that, with creative use of disc cloning and resetting, had effectively only had Vista installed and then updated each month, but no other use. After a few years of this, it eventually became unbootable.

[LessWileyCoyote]

I have an Advent laptop which was sold with Vista and was an appalling sluggard - boot time around 3 mins to get to the login prompt. Replacing the HDD with an SSD and upgrading to Windows 10 changed it to a 30 second boot time and even now it's still perfectly usable for web browsing, email and mundane documents. For me, Windows 10 was an adaptable OS that could keep old hardware usable for simple tasks. The betrayal of the attempt to stampede everyone into Win11 has made me wary of MS altogether, despite having used its products for more than 30 years.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Lucky here...

Up to now nothing broke, including Servers. Will be testing for my pet bugs again, I might be lucky!

Oh, and OF COURSE Intel driver issue AGAIN. No improvement since Windows 3 I see...

Oh, and have you heard about Joshua Khane, who lost his Microsoft account, all gone? Including the software he bought? The data loss is on him, but losing all bought games and other software is not.

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Lucky here...

Why do backups ?

Do not trust the cloud - its not yours

I use OneDrive for me, the misses and her mum - mainly for auto backup of phone pictures - of which they take lots and is generally, hassle free

All the devices we have Onedrive installed, it is configured to download all files to the local device so no matter what MS do I still have local copies (Ok. more a problem now with prices going through the roof, a 2TB NVME is now 4x the cost 18 months ago)

I have a NAS that can also download.the different OneDrive accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lucky here...

Maybe you should find something better than OneDrive....

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Lucky here...

One does not simply

use one drive

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Lucky here...

Cost is bonkers cheap

Owncloud is a bit of a pain on my Synology nas too

[Alumoi]

Re: Lucky here...

One word: Nextcloud.

Just saying.

[IGotOut]

Re: Lucky here...

Ive had Nextcloud completely destroy itself as well.

Plus Nextcloud isn't a backup device. It's a file synchronization system. See above why it completely destroyed itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lucky here...

OneDrive is "the cloud" and is not to be trusted. You're making no sense.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Lucky here...

You obviously fail to read. Classical bad AC. Citing from "PCScreenOnly": I have a NAS that can also download.the different OneDrive accounts. Please make room for those ACs with a valid reason to use AC.

[TheCobbler]

Yup

I sometimes fill a small container with ice and place it under my laptop. The fan never stops on my Dell and heat was ruining my desk. Blame Microsoft, but is it possible it is also a crappy computer? I may resort to liquid nitrogen for cooling.

[Lon24]

Re: Yup

Have you tried putting the ice cubes on top of the keyboard? It will shorten updates - and much else beside.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Yup

You can try Throttlestop. Limit the max multiplier. And if you don't have hyper-v activated you can undervolt. Assuming Intel CPU here though. I use it on my "solar controller" laptop, and this way the fan almost never spins up. Well, expect during Windows Update of course.

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Yup

Maybe pop the case off, get the cooking system out and put decent thermal paste on and give the fans good air blast

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its Dell

I have been less then impressed with my last two dells, took about 2 years for Microsoft/Dell to get my Presissions usb c stable. The latitude i have now has had months of bluetooth issues. Im no Microslop fan but Dell is not pulling their weight either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Maybe its Dell

My Lenovo fan hasn't shut off since the update yesterday... I don't think this issue is limited to Dell laptops.

[Vectrexer]

Patch Tuesday 2026-07-14 killed a Dell 16 Plus DB16255

Unfortunately it looks like patch Tuesday for July 14th. 2026 has resulted in my friend's Dell 16 Plus DB16255 now having no boot device. She had her computer set up to automatically download updates and install them.

When it came time for the reboot on her Dell 16 Plus laptop the issue surfaced after the reboot. The Dell BIOS reported " No bootable device". All settings in BIOS were as expected for the configuration of her laptop. And the NVME drive in the laptop still reports healthy. No other change to the laptop except the Windows 11 update.

Microsoft screwed up with this update. Or maybe a combination of Microsoft plus Dell. In any case, I'll be heading over to her place this evening to perform a rescue of her laptop.

Thankfully nothing incredibly important was stored on it. So in case we have to do a full reload, it won't be too painful for her. But it still sucks that she's without her main computer for more than a day now.

[Jurassic.Hermit]

Re: Patch Tuesday 2026-07-14 killed a Dell 16 Plus DB16255

Yup, I've got one of those laptops, fortunately I don't do auto downloads and installs.

That said, it's been behaving like a tortoise for the past 6 months on Windows 11, it's meant to be a pretty powerful machine with lots of RAM and disk, but this experience now is like going back 10 years.

[Yes Me]

In control

Dell user here. Nothing to report except that InControl still works. Who needs patches anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK then, try this…

Let me know how you get on.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Dell 5410 and since yseterday's patching its running like a dog

[Locomotion69]

So given that you shall apply the patches as soon as possible, I understand that for some users this means "when your Dell freezes over?"

[JackDeth]

So glad......

So glad I switched to Linux years ago and didn't have to deal with this crap anymore.

Unfortunately, no we have to support our customers who still use Windows and have to deal with this crap. Lol.

[MrKrotos]

My Dell Inspiron 7425 was affected by this, it just shutdown with no warning at all.

It also caused some corruption to an external Bitlockered drive that I was running a robocopy script on :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsofts power management code has been broken for months. Its randomly restarting the usb driver according to the windows event manager, so every device reconnects. This would be fine, if it wasn't say, a usb disk I was writing an iso too, a kobo or a tomtom sat nav.

And its definitely 11 doing this, as the same laptop has 10 dual booting, and thats working fine doing the same tasks.

And before anyone says linux, I'm actually triple booting with MX linux. Thats going to be a permanent thing, apart from the odd program that i havent found a linux equivalent of.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Had something similar... It was the USB driver. Either I had to update the OEM USB driver, or I had to remove the OEM drives and the windows built-in did it right. Forgot which direction, just try :D.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

GenAI "patches" - the gift that keeps on giving.

[blu3b3rry]

I left my Dell Latitude updating before I left today

I guess we'll see if it still works in the morning. It likes to cook its own guts anyway so I'd be impressed if the patch makes it much worse....!

[Barry Patterson]

Well, guess the list needs to include the XPS 15 9530.

Took over an hour to do updates, then when I thought I shut down I found the laptop had gone dark, but the fan was running and the laptop was hotter than comfortable to the touch.

Been acting up a bit today too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Storage

Why does MS want me to keep a large part of my disk empty just so they can load their updates, half of which are not essential. I'm being forced to move data or apps just so I can stay patched. What a waste of resource.

[Richard 31]

Small numbet

A small number of Intel powered Dells...

For that I am reading all Intel powered Dells that officially supported by Windows 11..

Technically only a small number of them as Intel Dells go back 40 years at this point.

[druck]

Days? since we broke something

Somewhere, deep in the heart of Microsoft's Redmond campus, a sad-faced engineer is likely resetting the "Days since we broke something" counter and thinking fondly of the days when the number reached double or triple figures. ®

Except on Windows it's not days, but units of 18ms, and yes they managed triple digits of those once.