February updates break some Windows Server 2022 VMs

Microsoft says some Windows Server 2022 digital machines may not boot up after putting in updates launched throughout this month’s Patch Tuesday.

This identified difficulty solely impacts VMs with Secure Boot enabled and operating on vSphere ESXi 6.7 U2/U3 or vSphere ESXi 7.0.x.

“After putting in KB5022842 on visitor digital machines (VMs) operating Windows Server 2022 on some variations of VMware ESXi, Windows Server 2022 may not begin up,” Microsoft stated.

VMware and Redmond are investigating the difficulty and can present extra info as quickly because it’s out there.

While presently, there isn’t any repair for impacted VMs, VMware gives admins with affected hosts with a number of non permanent workarounds till a everlasting answer is offered.

To deal with the difficulty and work across the boot points, you may take one of many following measures:

1. Upgrade the ESXi Host the place the digital machine in query is operating to vSphere ESXi 8.0
2. Disable “Secure Boot” on the VMs.
3. Do not set up the KB5022842 patch on any Windows 2022 Server digital machine till the difficulty is resolved.

The Secure Boot possibility could be disabled for every VM utilizing the next process:

1. Power off the VM.
2. Right-click the digital machine and click on Edit Settings.
3. Click the VM Options tab.
4. Under Boot Option, uncheck the “Secure Boot enabled“

Unfortunately, in case you have already put in this month’s KB5022842 Windows Server 2022 cumulative replace, uninstalling it is not going to resolve the difficulty. 

The solely method to make sure that your VMs can boot once more is to replace the ESXi host to vSphere ESXi 8.0 or disable Secure Boot.

Microsoft can also be engaged on addressing one other difficulty the place WSUS servers upgraded to Windows Server 2022 could fail to push February 2022 Windows 11 22H2 updates to shoppers.

This identified difficulty solely impacts WSUS servers upgraded from Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019.

Redmond additionally gives a workaround for admins with impacted WSUS servers which requires them to re-add inadvertently eliminated Unified Update Platform (UUP) MIME sorts eliminated throughout the improve course of which might be inflicting the replace propagation issues.