Microsoft has fixed a known issue affecting Windows applications that use ODBC database connections after installing the November 2022 Patch Tuesday updates.

This issue affects Windows client and server platforms, from Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 up to the latest versions of Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.

Microsoft said today that this month’s Patch Tuesday updates address “a known issue that affects applications that use the Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) SQL Server driver (sqlsrv32.dll) to connect to databases of data”.

“The connection may fail. You may also receive an error in the application or you may receive an error from the SQL server.”

As Redmond revealed in December, impacted applications may fail to connect to databases using Microsoft’s SQL Server ODBC driver (sqlsrv32.dll) after installing November Patch Tuesday updates.

To check if applications that use ODBC connections are failing to retrieve data, you can launch them and then run the command “tasklist /m sqlsrv32.dll” from a command prompt window (without the quotes ).

Temporary attenuation also available

Customers affected by this known issue who cannot immediately install today’s cumulative updates can use two methods to mitigate its impact and re-enable damaged applications:

• If your application already uses or can use the Data Source Name (DSN) to select ODBC connections, install Microsoft ODBC 17 Driver for SQL Server and select it to use with your application using DSN
• If your application cannot use DSN, it will need to be modified to allow DSN or to use a newer ODBC driver than the Microsoft ODBC SQL Server driver (sqlsrv32.dll).

Microsoft added today that “if you have implemented the workaround above, it is recommended that you continue to use the workaround configuration.”

Other issues triggered by the November Patch Tuesday updates have also been resolved over the past two months, including domain controller login failures and other authentication issues and hangs and restarts on some domain controllers caused by LSASS memory leak issue.

Today, Redmond too fixed an issue causing blue screen crashes with 0xc000021a errors on Windows 10 systems after installing update KB5021233 released on December Patch Tuesday.