Microsoft provides a remedy for a problem that has existed since October: Some users have been using 10 since the upgrade to Windows H2 plagued by crashes, blue screens and reboots. With certain actions such as listing groups in the computer management, the mmc.exe generates a blue screen with the stop code 0xc 0000374. In all cases, the cause is the critical process LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service, C: WINDOWS system 32 lsass.exe). The machine must then be rebooted. This affected clients with Windows 10 Version 20 H2 as well as Windows Server Version 20 H2.

Microsoft had this problem in November 2020 admitted, whereby Windows 10 Version 20 H2 as well as the version 2004 are mentioned as affected. To protect Windows – 10 – users, Microsoft had an upgrade stop for function updates on Windows 10 20 H2 set.

Incompatibility of the module lsass.exe According to Microsoft, the cause of the crashes was an incompatibility of the lsass.exe module, which could not handle renamed build-in accounts such as Administrator or Guest. However, the author of this post has indications that the crashes are not exclusively related to renamed build-in accounts. The bug often affected systems that had been updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Microsoft announced that it would provide updated bundles and updated installation media in the next update cycles in order to prevent the problem with upgrades.

In January 2021 Microsoft gave on the status website for Windows 10 20 H2 now announced that the upgrade lock has been lifted. The warning that a system is not upgrading to Windows 10 20 H2 should only appear if this upgrade is initiated using outdated installation media.

As part of troubleshooting, the company has been providing since December 2020 updated packages for feature updates that are delivered through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager in managed environments. Since December 7th 2020, updated installation images for Visual Studio Subscriptions (VSS, formerly MSDN Subscriptions) and in the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) are available.

Even with systems that are supplied with the current function updates via Windows Update, the upgrade lock on Windows 10 20 H2 due to the Lsass.exe error has now been eliminated.

(emw )