Microsoft kills unfixable KB5034440/KB5034441 updates, replaces with KB5042321/KB5042320

Windows 11s stock bladn and white photo

Earlier today, Microsoft released Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 10 (KB5041580 / KB5041578 / KB5041773 / KB5041782), and Windows 11 versions 23H2, 22H2, 21H2 (KB5041585 / KB5041592), as well as for 24H2 (KB5041571).

Alongside these, the tech giant also quietly (and finally) retired KB5034441 and KB5034440 WinRE updates which would be a constant headache for both Windows 10 and 11 users since they would lead to "0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE" and fail to install on systems that did not have sufficient space on their system's recovery partition.

As such users have had to manually resize their recovery partition either with the help of a step-by-step guide (KB5028997) that Microsoft published or with the help of a PowerShell script.

For those that have not been following it, Microsoft released these WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment) updates to address a BitLocker Secure Boot bypass vulnerability under "CVE-2024-20666". Microsoft said that the security flaw could allow attackers to bypass BitLocker encryption if they managed to get physical access to an unpatched PC. (This BitLocker-related issue is different from the one the company just fixed with its latest Patch Tuesday, the ones linked in the first para.)

Once Microsoft became aware of the "0x80070643" install fail bug, the company promised that it would fix the issue such that the manual workaround using the aforementioned methods was no longer necessary.

However, earlier this year in May, Microsoft accepted defeat admitting that an "automatic resolution of this issue won't be available" via future Windows updates, and as such, manual workaround was the only way to fix it. In order to make it easy for users to figure out whether they needed the WinRE update, Microsoft also published a list of requirements.

Finally, though, these troublesome WinRE updates have been pulled completely. On the support documents for KB5042321 and KB504232, which have replaced KB5034440 and KB5034441 respectively, Microsoft has added the following information:

August 13, 2024

Moved this content from update KB5034440/KB5034441 which has been retired.

The summary sections for the updates have also been updated:

Summary

This update automatically applies Safe OS Dynamic Update (KB5034236 / KB5034232) to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) on a running PC. The update installs improvements to Windows recovery features.

NOTE This update requires 250 MB of free space in the recovery partition to install successfully.

If you would like to make sure your device is offered this update, please follow the Instructions to manually resize your partition or use a sample script to increase the size of the WinRE recovery partition.

Once your partition has sufficient disk space, click Start > Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates to have the update offered to you and then install it.

Here's to hoping the same issue does not pop up again. You can find the official support articles here (KB5042321 / KB5042320) on Microsoft's website.