Microsoft has released an interim fix for a known issue affecting Windows applications using ODBC database connections after installing the November 2022 Patch Tuesday updates.

As the company disclosed in December, affected applications may not connect to databases through connections using Microsoft’s SQL Server ODBC driver.

This known issue affects both 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.

“After installing this update, applications that use ODBC connections through Microsoft ODBC SQL Server Driver (sqlsrv32.dll) to access databases may fail to connect,” Microsoft said.

Additionally, users may receive “EMS encountered a problem” errors in applications or from SQL Server with “Protocol error in TDS stream” or “Unknown token received from SQL Server” messages.

To check if one of your applications is using ODBC connections and failing to retrieve data, you can open it and then run the command “tasklist /m sqlsrv32.dll” from a prompt window of command (without quotes).

Temporary mitigation now available

Customers affected by this known issue can use one of two methods to mitigate its impact and relaunch damaged applications:

• If your application already uses or can use the Data Source Name (DSN) to select ODBC connections, install Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 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 said they are currently working on a resolution, with more details on this issue to be released in a future update.

The company has also addressed other issues triggered after installing November Patch Tuesday updates over the past couple of months.

In November, it released emergency out-of-band (OOB) updates to fix domain controller login failures and other authentication issues.

A month later, it fixed an LSASS memory leak issue that led to hangs and restarts on some domain controllers after installing Windows Server November Updates.