If you're still running Windows 10 on your PC and you installed the latest update, labeled KB5021233 and released on December 13th, you might have run into an issue where your computer boots straight into a blue screen crash. If that's the case, don't worry (too much), you're not alone. Microsoft has formally acknowledged there's a problem with this update and added the issue to its release health dashboard, along with steps n how to work around the issue.

According to Microsoft, the issue arises because there may be a difference between the file versions of a file called hidparse.sys stored on the Windows/system32 and Windows/system32/drivers folders of the disk where Windows is installed. This causes the signature validation to fail, which means the computer can't boot.

Thankfully, the issue can be fixed without reinstalling the operating system or anything like that. You'll first need to boot into the Windows Recovery Environement (WinRE), which should happen automatically after your device fails to boot correctly a few times. From there, follow these steps:

  1. Click Troubleshoot, then Start recovery, troubleshooting, and diagnostic tools.
  2. Choose Advanced options, and then Command Prompt. This will restart your device into a command line interface.
  3. Once you see a Command Prompt window, enter the following command (you may need to change your drive letter from C to something else if Windows is installed on a different drive):
    xcopy C:\windows\system32\drivers\hidparse.sys C:\windows\system32\hidparse.sys
    ​​​​​​​This will copy the file from one folder to the other, ensuring the two locations have the same version.
  4. Type exit and hit Enter to close the Command Prompt window and reboot the computer.
  5. Click Continue, and your computer should boot into Windows normally.

While following these steps may seem a bit harrowing if you've never done it before, it's actually a fairly painless process and you won't have to lose any data or wait too long to get your PC back up and running. Once you've done this, you should be good to go. Still, Microsoft should fix this issue in an upcoming update, but that will probably only happen in January, seeing as we're in the middle of the holiday season and there's no optional update in the second half of December.

There's no such issue affecting Windows 11, so if you have this version, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.


Source: Microsoft