Microsoft issues emergency fix for Wi-Fi foul-up delivered hot and fresh on Patch Tuesday

WPA3 access may cause Blue Screen of Death

Microsoft has issued an out-of-band Windows 10 patch to fix a self-inflicted error that can crash devices that attempt to access Wi-Fi networks secured with Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) standard.

The code landed in a January 21 preview build of upcoming Windows 10 and Windows Server releases. And then it landed in KB4601315 three days ago on Patch Tuesday.

If you've adopted either update and use WPA3, it has the unintended consequence of occasionally delivering a steaming fresh serve of Blue Screen of Death.

Or as Microsoft puts it.

You might receive stop error 0x7E in nwifi.sys with a blue screen when you attempt to use a Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) connection. You are more likely to encounter this issue when reconnecting to a Wi-Fi network after disconnecting, or when waking from sleep or hibernation.

The good news is that there's not a lot of WPA-3 out there, so relatively few users will be affected. The out-of-band patch described in kb5001028 should also arrive automatically.

Unless you can't get into a Wi-Fi network because of the bug, in which case The Register wishes you a happy weekend figuring that out. ®