Microsoft has confirmed that a bug in its Windows Update caching service caused company-managed Windows computers to install driver updates that IT administrators had specifically blocked. The problem began when the caching service dropped device enrollment information, tricking Windows into treating managed machines as unmanaged — and therefore eligible for automatic updates. Reports from administrators described tens of thousands of devices receiving unexpected BIOS and driver installations, with some machines ending up with broken audio or video after the fact.
Microsoft says the drivers that installed were all Microsoft-signed and do not pose a security risk, but the broken audio and video cases show the real-world impact. The company fixed the root cause on the server side by June 4 and confirmed the issue is now resolved. No end-user action is needed — affected machines should be back to normal, and devices that lost audio or video functionality may need their drivers rolled back by an IT administrator.