Windows 11 24H2 beset by another bug, and this one affects gamers

Those of you who play certain games from Ubisoft are facing a dreaded new enemy -- namely Windows 11 24H2. A bug report filed by Microsoft last Friday revealed that the affected games could freeze, crash, or even trigger a black screen if you try to run them in the 2024 update for Windows 11.

The five games that aren't playing nicely are:

With the games failing to respond when starting, loading, or running, Microsoft has blocked the Windows 11 24H2 update for PCs with any of these titles. The company also cautions affected users not to manually update to the 2024 version using the Windows 11 Installation Assistant or the media creation tool until the glitch has been fixed.

As a workaround, Ubisoft has released a hotfix for Star Wars Outlaws to prevent the game from freezing or crashing. However, Microsoft says that you may still run into performance problems. Otherwise, the two companies are working on a resolution to squash the bug across all five titles.

What if you've already installed the latest Windows update and you try playing one of the affected games? Assuming the game stops responding and you can't exit it the normal way, here's what you'll have to do.

Open Task Manager. The quickest way is to right-click on the Start button or the Taskbar and select Task Manager from the menu. Look for the name of the game or the game launcher in the Processes screen. Right-click the name and then select End Task from the menu to manually shut it down.

That's not the only new bug impacting Windows 11 24H2. Another glitch reported by Microsoft last Friday affects USB-connected scanners, printers, fax machines, modems, and network devices.

With this bug, the problematic devices are ones that support the eSCL (eScanner Communication Language) protocol. eSCL is a driverless scanning protocol designed for scanning over an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network or a USB connection. Here, you may find that your PC doesn't discover the connected peripheral, preventing you from using it. The conflict is that the peripheral device fails to switch out of eSCL mode to USB mode.

Microsoft has blocked the 24H2 update for computers with any USB device that supports the eSCL protocol. Anyone who uses such a device should also avoid manually installing the update.

Since officially launching on October 1, Windows 11 24H2 has been hit by a host of bugs that have plagued users and undoubtedly frustrated Microsoft. In response, the company has had to block the update for a wide range of affected devices.

To address the issues, Microsoft has since rolled out two bug patches -- one in late October and another in mid-November. The October update fixed some bugs but also created new ones. The November update resolved most, but not all, the outstanding glitches. And now, further bugs seem to keep popping up, turning the update into an ongoing challenge for Microsoft.