December 13, 2022—KB5021255 (OS Build 22621.963)

11/8/22
IMPORTANT Because of minimal operations during the holidays and the upcoming Western new year, there won’t be a non-security preview release for the month of December 2022. There will be a monthly security release (known as a “B” release) for December 2022. Normal monthly servicing for both B and non-security preview releases will resume in January 2023.

For information about Windows update terminology, see the article about the types of Windows updates and the monthly quality update types. For an overview of Windows 11, version 22H2, see its update history page.NoteFollow @WindowsUpdate to find out when new content is published to the Windows release health dashboard.

Highlights

• This update addresses a known issue that might affect Task Manager. It might display certain elements in the user interface (UI) in unexpected colors. Some parts of the UI might not be readable. This issue might occur if you have “Choose your mode” set to “Custom” in the Personalization > Colors section of Settings.
• This update addresses security issues for your Windows operating system.

Improvements

This security update includes improvements that were a part of update KB5020044 (released November 29, 2022). When you install this KB:

• This update addresses an issue that might affect Data Protection Application Programming Interface (DPAPI) decryption. The decryption of a certificate private key might fail. Because of this, virtual private network (VPN) and other 802.1 certificate-based authentication might fail. This issue might occur when you encrypt the DPAPI master key with a wrong value.
• This update addresses a known issue that affects Direct Access. The issue might stop you from reconnecting to it after temporarily losing network connectivity. The issue might also occur when you switch between Wi-Fi networks or access points.
  If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.For more information about security vulnerabilities, please refer to the Security Update Guide website and the December 2022 Security Updates.

Windows 11 servicing stack update - 22621.898

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

Known issues in this update

tasklist /m sqlsrv32.dll

`| This issue is addressed in KB5022303.
IT admins| You might have intermittent issues saving, copying, or attaching files using 32-bit apps, which are large address aware and using the CopyFile API. Windows devices are more likely to be affected by this issue when using some commercial or enterprise security software that uses extended file attributes. Microsoft Office apps, such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel are only affected when using 32-bit versions and you might receive the error, "Document not saved."This issue is unlikely to be experienced by consumers using Windows devices in their home or on non-managed commercial devices. Apps are not affected by this issue if they are 64-bit or 32-bit and NOT large address aware.| This issue is addressed in KB5027231.

How to get this update

If you want to remove the LCUTo remove the LCU after installing the combined SSU and LCU package, use the DISM/Remove-Package command line option with the LCU package name as the argument. You can find the package name by using this command:DISM /online /get-packages.Running Windows Update Standalone Installer (wusa.exe) with the**/uninstall **switch on the combined package will not work because the combined package contains the SSU. You cannot remove the SSU from the system after installation.

File informationFor a list of the files that are provided in this update, download the file information for cumulative update 5021255. For a list of the files that are provided in the servicing stack update, download the file information for the SSU - version 22621.898.