Emergency Update for Windows 11
Windows 11 KB5070773 is being rolled out as an out-of-band update to fix a broken Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) caused by KB5066835.
The issue arose after the October 2025 Patch Tuesday update, where the keyboard and mouse stopped working in WinRE, making the recovery process unusable.
- KB5066835 was released on October 14 as a mandatory update for Windows 11 24H2/25H2.
- The update broke localhost connections, but Microsoft was able to reverse the changes via server-side updates.
- However, the WinRE issue required a separate out-of-band update, KB5070773, to resolve.
Our tests confirmed that the keyboard and mouse no longer work in WinRE, which renders the recovery process unusable.
Author's summary: Windows 11 emergency update fixes recovery issue.