[German]Microsoft has informed its users of Windows 10, Windows 11 and various Windows Server versions about a new bug introduced via update. One is affected when one suddenly cannot open XPS documents anymore if these documents have characters outside the English language range. However, I wonder how many users really use XPS documents.
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I came across the information by accident while researching the bug described in the article Windows: Systems with latest CPUs vulnerable to data damage. The information can be found in the Windows status area in the Known Issues section of the affected versions. For Windows 10 21H2, the post XPS documents with non-English language characters might not open from August 8, 2022, can be found with the following notes:
After installing update KB5014666 (or any subsequent update), XPS Viewer might not open XML Paper Specification (XPS) documents in some non-English languages, including some Japanese and Chinese character encodings. This problem affects both XML Paper Specification (XPS) and Open XML Paper Specification (OXPS) files.
When this problem occurs, you may receive the error message "This page cannot be displayed" in XPS Viewer, or the program may become unresponsive and have high CPU usage with ever-increasing memory usage. If the error occurs and XPS Viewer is not closed, the memory usage can reach up to 2.5 GB before the program closes unexpectedly.
Away from the question of who is still using XPS documents at all, Microsoft itself gives the assessment that this problem does not affect most home users. This is because XPS Viewer is no longer installed by default since Windows 10, version 1803, and has to be installed manually. It is possible that XPS document is used in corporate environments. Then the following Windows versions are affected:
- Client: Windows 11 version 21H2
- Windows 10 version 20H2 to21H2
- Server: Windows Server version 20H2
Microsoft developers are working on a solution and will provide an update in one of the next versions. Do you have environments where XPS documents are used?
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