By continuing to push its Windows 10 customers towards upgrading to Windows 11, Microsoft has started 2026 how it finished 2025. But some people who recently installed the first free update of the year for Windows 11 will have found some unwanted bugs, which has prompted the firm to release an emergency software patch to fix things.

As reported by The Verge, Microsoft had to release an unplanned emergency software update on January 17, just four days after it pushed out 2026’s first big software update for Windows 11 on January 13.

According to Microsoft, the initial update affected Windows 11 version 23H2 and meant some computers were failing to shut down or hibernate, meaning PCs could not be switched off.

“Microsoft has identified issues upon installing the January 2026 Windows security update. To address these issues, an out-of-band (OOB) update was released today, January 17, 2026,” the firm said, confirming the following bugs:

“Connection and authentication failures in remote connection applications: This issue affects multiple platforms including Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 10, version 22H2 ESU; and Windows Server 2025. See the bottom of this message for the complete list of affected products.

“Devices with Secure Launch might fail to shut down or hibernate: This issue only affects Windows 11, version 23H2.”

This is not the latest version of Windows 11, and was in fact first released in 2023. The bug affecting shut downs only affects computers on this software version on the Enterprise or IoT editions of Windows 11, which means individual consumers should largely be unaffected.

But as you can read above, the latest global version of Windows 11, 25H2, was affected by the bug concerned with remote connection applications, which refers to Windows’ popular Remote Desktop feature.

“After installing the January 2026 Windows security update (KB5074109), some users experienced sign-in failures during Remote Desktop connections,” Microsoft confirmed. “This issue affected authentication steps for different Remote Desktop applications on Windows such as the Windows App.”

It’s not a great look for Microsoft given this is the first update of the year and it caused at least two major bugs for Windows 11 users. The firm stopped supporting Windows 10 in October of last year, no longer sending out free software updates, effectively retiring the operating system.

Users can upgrade to Windows 11 for free if they PC can cope with the OS, otherwise they face running outdated, unsupported software or forking out for a new machine.