Windows 10 has received a fix for the major printer issues which were accidentally caused by Microsoft’s most recent batch of security patches.
As you may recall, the cumulative updates for Windows 10 (May 2020 Update, and earlier versions) released in June proved seriously troublesome for a whole range of printers including Ricoh models (most prevalently) and also Brother, Canon, Kyocera, HP devices and others. Issues were also being caused for software-based printing (for example, when using print to PDF functionality).
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The good news, as mentioned, is that there is now a fix available from Microsoft in the form of update KB4567523.
Microsoft states: “[KB4567523] updates an issue that might prevent certain printers from printing, generate print errors, or cause apps and print spoolers to close unexpectedly.”
Note that this fix won’t be pushed out to your PC automatically, at least not yet – it’ll arrive in the next batch of monthly patches in July. However, if you want it now, it’s possible to grab KB4567523 by downloading it manually.
Manual installation
To do this, as Windows Latest reports, you can get KB4567523 by directly downloading it from the Microsoft Update Catalog, where you’ll find the x86 and x64 versions (for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10 respectively).
You’ll get an MSU file which you can double click to install the update, then after rebooting your PC, you should (hopefully) find that your printer is now behaving normally.
Windows 10 is going through another sticky patch as far as problems are concerned, with the new May 2020 Update suffering from a fair few bugbears, including messing Google Chrome users around.
Another recent Windows 10 cumulative update is forcing the tablet mode interface on the normal desktop, so mouse and keyboard users are getting UI elements and icons which are more widely spaced and designed for touch usage.
Sadly, in recent history, Windows 10 users have become pretty accustomed to problems popping up, particularly in terms of Microsoft’s fixes causing unintended collateral damage in other areas of the operating system.
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