Nov. & Dec. 2025 CU's giving startup/shutdown errors

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Rozplay

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A few months ago I did a clean install of W11 using NT Lite - only lightly customized. Probably the biggest thing was removing Edge and Onedrive, but nothing majorly deeper than that.

It's been going great (I love your work). However...

Last month's Nov CU/patch tuesday, and same for this month's Dec CU, both are giving me big issues which I'm wondering might be related to missing components or features.

The Nov CU was making my system unable to shutdown - Windows would go through the shutdown process and appear to complete shutting down, but the computer itself would remain technically powered on. This is very strange and I've never seen it before.

I paused updates for a month and decided to try this month's Dec CU. Nope - same issue, but also, it now hangs once it hits the desktop, with a grey screen. It is technically 'in windows' at this point as I can bring up Task Manager with CTR-ALT-DEL, but it takes about 2 minutes of a blank grey screen before the desktop loads. And the shutdown problem is still there.

Since I have only seen a few other people describing this issue online, I am wondering if maybe it's due to missing components, features, or something else due to customizing with NT Lite. Trouble is, I have absolutely no way of knowing what to test.

I'd rather not do yet another clean install until I know the issue (if that's even possible).

Have you seen anything in these two most recent CU updates that might point to the problem? Anything jumps out that might suggest a required feature I'm missing?

Happy to provide logs etc if that helps!
 
I don't use Windows 11 so I can't answer your question, but it would be helpful to clarify... did you install the updates with NTLite? Or was it through Windows Update?
 
tharri said:
I don't use Windows 11 so I can't answer your question, but it would be helpful to clarify... did you install the updates with NTLite? Or was it through Windows Update?
Click to expand...

Many thanks - I installed these normally through Windows Update.

I have a backup image of my OS, which I've now reverted to seeing as these updates were giving such bad issues. But yeah it's specifically this/these updates (I guess the Dec CU supercedes the Nov CU, so in effect it's just 'one' update that is now the problem)
 
tistou77 said:
Some ideas

Click to expand...

Thanks, although I don't think any of those apply here - it is very specifically due to this update, or I guess the Nov and/or Dec update (as the former is rolled into the latter of course). That thread is pretty old and the main ones there, like fast startup etc, I've already got turned off.

It's a pretty newly built system too so the modern stuff in regards to bios and power states should be present too, if it was something like that.

My money is on it being a missing component or feature, but it's very hard to say.
 
Other than providing the preset to double-check if something crucial was removed or disabled, I would suggest to refresh the OS with the same ISO + Updates + Removals and run setup.exe to fix your host, or even better use Host Refresh wizard.
If using the manual way, make sure:
- not to enable Unattended
- enable Host Refresh compatibility to protect needed components for this upgrade
- not to mount ISO in Explorer
- when asked, choose Keep files or cancel.
 
nuhi said:
Other than providing the preset to double-check if something crucial was removed or disabled, I would suggest to refresh the OS with the same ISO + Updates + Removals and run setup.exe to fix your host, or even better use Host Refresh wizard.
If using the manual way, make sure:
- not to enable Unattended
- enable Host Refresh compatibility to protect needed components for this upgrade
- not to mount ISO in Explorer
- when asked, choose Keep files or cancel.
Click to expand...

I actually think I do have the preset file hanging around! I will grab it in a few hours.

I would also love to hear more about this method you're mentioning here - would this be simpler/less of a clusterfuck than the built-in Windows "Repair/Reinstall" function? Cause in the past when i used that, it reset way more stuff than expected and generally gave me more headaches.
 
Thank you, nothing in that preset should break shutdown.
Best would be to proceed with the Host Refresh fix, using the latest NTLite, unedited ISO + same preset + latest updates.
 
nuhi said:
Thank you, nothing in that preset should break shutdown.
Best would be to proceed with the Host Refresh fix, using the latest NTLite, unedited ISO + same preset + latest updates.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much Nuhi.

For the record, I should also mention that prior to NTLite, I got the ISO from UUPDump and used the built-in config to pre-remove most of the stock apps and make some similar config tweaks, but nothing major (I assume you're familiar with UUP Dump's config). Probably the 'worst' change in there was pre-culling Edge, so it's unlikely to be a result of those changes.

I should also mention that post-install, I used Raphire's W11 debloat script, which again - is fairly simple and mostly only removes crap like Clipchamp and all that horseshit. It doesn't really do any deep changes to Windows besides minor taskbar cosmetics.

It's my first time using Host Refresh but assuming the above two things aren't an issue, it might be just what I need. I'll give it a shot today. Thanks very much!
 
nuhi said:
Thank you, nothing in that preset should break shutdown.
Best would be to proceed with the Host Refresh fix, using the latest NTLite, unedited ISO + same preset + latest updates.
Click to expand...

Many thanks. I tried this earlier today and it didn't go very well. The resulting Windows install (a) failed to enter windows the first time (hung on 'Preparing Windows'), then upon forced restart it was missing a bunch of stuff that I had previously (such as WSL, or Powershell not being the default command line editor, and other 'missing' things).

I'm sure this is due to user error perhaps. Possibly there had been an error during the NTLite Host Refresh ISO loading phase.

Or maybe my understanding is wrong - does this method overwrite/replace a bunch of stuff, or even remove stuff if you leave it unchecked in NTlite?

Is there a way to keep my Windows how it is now, and overwrite/replace/remove nothing except.... these updates and what's needed for them, or something?

Sorry if my understanding of what to expect is off.
 
I should also note - I tried installing the latest CU/MSU from Microsoft directly instead of via WU and it failed immediately.

Processing 1 of 1 - An error occurred "-windows11.0-kb5043080.msu" Error: 0x80070228 Error: 552 The passed ACL did not contain the minimum required information.
Click to expand...

Double-clicking it instead says it's 'not applicable' to my system (even though it most definitely is).

Might potentially be bigger problems afoot with this update....
 
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