Microsoft Fixed the Printer Bug This Week – With the Usual Fine Print

The patches rolled out today with a targeted fix for the bug that broke WSD, the service that lets you add a printer without too much swearing. Albert pointed out the obvious right away: adding a printer has always been an oxymoron, like military intelligence.

What the Patch Actually Did

The June Patch Tuesday update addressed a problem that hit 12 percent of Windows deployments. It wasn’t some edge-case issue. The bug made it even harder to discover network printers, especially in small offices that share them.

WSD stands for Web Services for Devices, and it was supposed to make printer setup simple. Instead, Microsoft introduced a flaw that broke the process for a lot of users. The fix is now out, so adding printers should work again for most people who were stuck.

The Real Cost to Your Team

Printers already fail on their own schedule. When a security patch makes them worse, you lose hours chasing down why a machine that printed yesterday suddenly can’t be found. That downtime adds up fast in a small office where every device needs to just work.

The villain here is the constant trade-off between staying protected and keeping daily tools running. Microsoft set up the fix so some printers still need a manual registry edit, which turns a simple update into another potential point of failure.

What To Do This Week

• Run Windows Update on every machine and note which printers stop working after the patch installs.
• Test adding a shared printer from a couple of workstations to confirm WSD is behaving again.
• Make sure all printer drivers and firmware are current before the next round of Microsoft patches lands.
• Flag any system that still needs the registry tweak so your team knows exactly where the manual step is required.

Questions about how this affects your setup? Schedule a free IT consultation and we’ll walk through it with you.