Microsoft slips Task Manager and processor count fixes into Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has resolved two issues vexing Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 users among the many security updates that emerged on Patch Tuesday.

While KB5046617 is a security update, it also contains several "quality improvements," including a fix for the Task Manager issue introduced in the October 2024 non-security preview update.

Microsoft noted the issue in its Windows Release Health dashboard. The problem was a reporting error on the processes page when "Group by Type" was selected. Apps, Background Processes, and Windows Processes in Task Manager displayed a count of zero, despite having active applications running.

The author of the original Task Manager, Dave Plummer, called it a "fairly severe bug" but added, "I can see how people might not have noticed it in test, as how often do you look at that count?"

But surely Microsoft has whizzy automated testing to check for such things?

Plummer, who has long since retired from Microsoft, replied, "I’d honestly bet that the chances that the automated tests actually OCR the status bar output are pretty low! But maybe they do these days, hard to know!

"Sure didn’t in my day, it was all manual testing…"

The patch also deals with Dev Drive access issues for Windows Subsystem for Linux and a mystery delay in installations of up to 40 minutes "for some hardware configurations."

Although Microsoft did not spell it out in the release notes for KB5046617, the patch also resolved difficulties Windows Server 2025 had on servers with 256 or more logical processors. Users reported installations failing, restart times measured in hours, or blue screens starting an application.

A temporary workaround was to limit the number of logical processors per server – less than ideal for administrators. The patch resolves the issue, according to Redmond.

Redmond has gradually been making its way through the growing list of known issues with Windows 11 24H2, some of which resulted in update blocks or safeguard holds being put in place to stop affected users stumbling over broken code. One, involving some fingerprint sensors failing to unlock devices, was resolved in October although Microsoft kept the safeguard in place until November 8.

The list of known issues with Windows Server is not as lengthy. In addition to the logical processor count issue, it also documents the unexpected upgrade problem where some administrators found Windows Server 2019 and 2022 systems automatically upgraded to Windows Server 2025.

Microsoft noted that the problem had been "mitigated," although one third-party vendor told The Register that it appeared the tech giant had "disabled the upgrade for now and will turn them [sic] back on at a later date." ®