Microsoft's Emergency Windows 11 Update Arrives To Fix Recovery Failures

A few unfortunate users of the Windows 11 October 2025 update (and Windows Server 2025) may have stumbled upon a critical issue where the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) failed to pick up mouse or keyboard input—but thankfully, Microsoft has finally released a patch fixing the issue. Well, to a point, anyway...if you were actually impacted by this issue, chances are high that you can't actually boot back into Windows to install the update yet, since the Windows Recovery Environment, unless triggered manually, emerges if something is stopping you from entering Windows normally. In that scenario, where you're still dealing with the worst of this issue and you can't install the OS update to fix it, what can you do?

Microsoft officially recommends the below workarounds for users unable to apply the update:

• Use a touchscreen keyboard to navigate WinRE, if you have a touch-enabled Windows ...