Windows 11 KB5083769 update breaks BITS and causes system freezes

It seems that every month after a Patch Tuesday update, something breaks in Windows 11. Following the release of KB5083769 earlier this month, users now seem to be running into BITS and SOAP download timeouts and bitsadmin freezes. This issue doesn’t seem to be limited to just one user either.

In a very clinical report on Microsoft Learn Q&A, user CHIHARU SHIBATA explains that since installing the most recent Patch Tuesday update, some of their PCs have started experiencing failures while their application is auto-updating, specifically during the download process.

According to Shibata, their application supports two download methods, BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) Web Service. The issue is causing both download methods to fail, with the download requests timing out.

They also report that the bitsadmin /list /allusers command appears to freeze during the failure state. A system reboot is apparently able to resolve the issue temporarily, with downloads succeeding. However, if you leave the system idle for “several tens of minutes”, the download failures reappear.

Uninstalling the KB5083769 update stops the issue from happening. Even after several hours, downloads continue to work normally. Based on their experience, the poster thinks Microsoft’s latest update has a defect affecting BITS or networking components.

In a related issue, Bhaskar Murari, made a post on the same website explaining that AutoCAD’s Advance Steel would fail to open drawings. One person replied to that thread explaining that if the KB can’t be uninstalled, then disabling BITS and disabling it on the affected system is a way to work around the issue. If readers want to do this, use the following steps:

• Open the Services Manager: Press Win + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog, type services.msc, and press Enter.
• Locate the Service: In the list that appears, scroll down until you find Background Intelligent Transfer Service.
• View Properties: Double-click on the service name (or right-click it and select Properties) to open the window seen in your attachment.

While these bugs are certainly frustrating for some users, it’s still a good idea to install Patch Tuesday updates that Microsoft delivers each month for the security features they deliver. If you are strongly against doing the updates, you can temporarily pause updates via Windows Updates in the settings.