KB5087424 breaks printing on Windows Server 2022, what to do

A quiet but nasty one landed in the May 2026 Windows updates: KB5087424 is breaking 32-bit printing on Windows Server 2022. If your business runs Server 2022 with networked printers, especially older hardware, you might find that printing has simply stopped since the patch went in. Staff will be seeing error popups mentioning splwow64.exe and error code 0xc0000142.

A lot of businesses across North Wales are running Server 2022 alongside a mixed fleet of printers accumulated over the years. That’s a completely normal setup, and this patch has broken a small but important piece of it.

What’s actually broken

Windows Server 2022 is 64-bit. Many older printers only have 32-bit drivers. Windows handles this mismatch by running a translator process called splwow64.exe, it sits in the middle and makes the two talk to each other. The May patch broke that translator. When someone tries to print, the process crashes and nothing comes out of the printer.

This has hit offices running print servers and Remote Desktop setups particularly hard, anywhere several staff send jobs through a shared print queue. Microsoft is aware of the issue but hadn’t released a fix at the time of writing.

Your three options right now

If printing has gone dark after the May update, here’s what you can do:

• Uninstall the patch temporarily, Roll back KB5087424 and block it from reinstalling until Microsoft releases a proper fix. This is the quickest path back to working printers.
• Switch to 64-bit drivers if they exist, Check with your printer vendor whether a 64-bit version of the driver is available. Newer machines often have one. More work upfront, but it solves the problem for good.
• Document it as a known issue, If neither option works right now, note it in writing as a known limitation with a temporary workaround (printing from a different machine, for example). Some businesses do this if a hardware refresh is already on the horizon.

Worth a broader conversation

This is the third or fourth Windows patch in as many months that’s broken something working perfectly well before. It’s a reasonable prompt to think about whether auto-deploying every patch on day one is the right approach for your setup. A short delay, maybe a week to test the big monthly updates on a non-critical machine first, is usually enough to catch problems like this before they bring everyone’s day to a halt. The discussion on r/msp gives a useful rundown of how other businesses have handled it.

Printing sounds trivial until it stops. Dragon Digital manages Windows Server infrastructure and print environments for local companies across North Wales, if printing has gone quiet since the May updates, or you’d like to know whether your setup is affected, a quick conversation will tell you where you stand.