KB4345418 and KB4054566 causing high CPU load

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The updates KB4345418 and KB4054566 which Microsoft released on July 16, 2018 seem to cause issues such as high CPU load or RDS connection issues on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 in some scenarios.

Microsoft released several updates on July 16, 2018 designed to resolve issues that were introduced by updates released on the July 2018 Patch Tuesday.

The updates fixed issues such as connectivity loss scenarios, stop error 0xD1 when running network monitoring workloads, issues that caused the restart of SQL servers to fail, or issues when trying to stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service.

The updates, KB4345418 for Windows 10 version 1607 and Windows Server 2016, and KB4054566, the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 for Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2, were designed to address the issues described. It appears that the updates may introduce issues of their own on systems they are installed on.

Server administrators started to report issues that they identified after installation of the updates shortly after release.

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One issue was that Microsoft Azure Active Directory Connect (AADConnect) stopped working after installation of the updates on Server 2016 and 2012 R2 machines.

A user on the Ask Woody forum described the issue in the following way:

Even with the updated patch on Server 2016 (KB4345418) is still causing an issue with AADConnect servers that triggers a 100% CPU spike on some of the Health and Reporting monitoring services, only fix at this point is to uninstall the latest update. It seems to impact at least 2012 and 2016 servers. …

A forum thread on the Microsoft Developer Network forum confirms the issue. One user reported that uninstallation of KB4054566 resolved the issue in a Windows Server 2012 R2 environment.

Restarting the services brings CPU usage back to normal, and the only option right now to resolve it appears to be to uninstall the latest updates.

But issues with AADConnect were not the only ones that administrators reported after release of the patches.

Matt Wilkinson reported on Twitter that KB4345418 was causing black screen upon login issues when using Remote Desktop Services on Server 2016.

KB 4345418 is causing issues on Server 2016 RDS with a black screen upon login. Have mitigated this issue with a script to delete firewall rules that are created per user. Black screen returned with this update.

Closing Words

The July 2018 updates caused a lot of issues for users up until now. It is not the first time that updates that Microsoft releases cause issues on systems they are installed on.

I think it is fair to say that users need to understand that any patch that Microsoft releases can have unforeseen consequences; some will even wreak the system. The creation of backups is advised.