A Windows Update from Hell
I’ll begin this tale with a cautionary reminder to my writer friends: Back up your files regularly. Because sometimes, computer issues arise that are so far beyond your control—and out of the norm—that you can’t possibly know they’re coming.
Case in point: the February 10, 2026 security update for Windows 11, aka KB5077181.
When I bought my current laptop in the fall of 2024, I chose it for the keyboard. My old laptop’s was dying (specifically the T, O, E, and spacebar keys…guess I use those a lot while writing!) My new laptop was designed for gaming, though I don’t do much of that anymore, and my thinking was if any laptop keyboard is going to withstand years in the hands of a novel writer, it’s going to be a gaming laptop. The only downside is it came with Windows 11 already installed.
Windows 11 isn’t that different than 10, but I had to tweak a few settings to get it back to a format I preferred. I also had to uninstall Microsoft’s infernal AI bullshit, but at least it gave me that option. I’m much happier when that crap isn’t on my PC.
Anyway…Up until last Friday, my laptop has been great. The keyboard hasn’t given me any trouble, even after writing three complete novel drafts and rewriting another, then however many book reviews and blog posts I wrote since I bought it. Last Friday was the date my laptop decided to install KB5077181.
It was fine for about a day, then one of my USB ports was acting up. In typical IT-minded fashion, I restarted my computer…and it entered the infinite restart loop. Shit.
My husband, who is still running Windows 10 on his laptop, did some research and found that it’s a common issue with this so-called security update. We were able to get my laptop to start in Safe Mode, but another “feature” of the update was that it wouldn’t let me uninstall it. Clicking the uninstall button froze the application.
Cue me cursing Microsoft for a few hours while praying my laptop wouldn’t restart on its own.
It stayed on, and I was able to continue working and writing, but anytime I removed something from a USB port, the port would stop working. I back up my files to a thumb drive, so not having working USB ports is an issue.
And so, I did more digging. It turns out, there’s a good number of PCs with the same issues after this update, and there is a way to force Windows to uninstall the update. It requires running a command prompt script, then miraculously, when uninstall is clicked, the update removes itself. (If you’re running into this same issue, the fix is explained here.) Once the update uninstalled, naturally, it needed a restart.
But this time, it restarted normally and has been working ever since. I’ve delayed the Windows update feature for as long as I can at this point, and hopefully, Microsoft will come up with a fix before the delay runs out.
This particular update didn’t affect me too much. Before it installed and asked for a restart, I backed up all my files. By the time it entered the infinite loop, there was only about a page and a half of text that wasn’t backed up (due to the USB issue), but that’s manageable to recreate. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.
But back to what I started this post with: If you haven’t backed up your files recently, now’s a good time to do so.