Adobe rolled out an out-of-band patch in late December to fix security flaws in Flash Player and because Microsoft integrated it into its own browsers, the company had to deliver the same fix via Windows Update for all its users. Including those running Windows 10, that is.

It turns out, however, that the patch the company released to Windows 10 users, labeled as KB3132372, is actually causing issues on these computers.

Some apps are no longer launching after installing this update, while others crash all of a sudden, users report. For the moment, no workaround is available, so the only option is to completely remove KB3132372 from your Windows 10 computer.

Impacted software

At this point, HP printer software, IncrediMail, and a number of online banking apps are impacted by the issues, but the list could expand as more users install the patch.

Windows 10 users experiencing such problems should remember that the operating system might attempt to re-install the update after you remove it, so hiding it completely until a fix is provided could be the better solution.

“Same problem. Removed the update yesterday and HP solution center worked ok. Overnight, Windows 10 reinstalled the update and HP solution center failed. Removed update again and HP Solution Center worked again. This needs to be fixed,” one HP customer whose computer was hit by the aforementioned problems explained in a post on the company's forums.

If you're not using Internet Explorer or Edge to browse the web, removing and hiding the update shouldn't create any security risk for your computer. But, on the other hand, if you use either of these two apps as your daily browser, it's better to stay away from Flash content coming from unknown sources or that you come across on the web and looks suspicious, at least until Microsoft provides a working patch.

We've also contacted Microsoft to find out if the company is aware of the problem and will update the article when an answer is provided.

Updated: Microsoft rolled out a new patch to correct these problems, so make sure you install it as soon as possible