Windows 10 crashing when you try to print? There's now an official fix

A generic blue screen of death in windows 10 os
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Recently an issue occurred that caused "certain printers using some apps" to crash Windows completely when printing. After the rollout of a recent Windows Patchday update on March 9th: KB5000802, users began reporting the error for which, until now, the only workaround had been to revert Windows to a previous state. 

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Affecting "a subset of Type 3 printer drivers" including those that some Kyocera, Ricoh, and Dymo printers run on, the error had been throwing up a blue screen of death with error "APC_INDEX_MISMATCH for win32kfull.sys" as users attempted to print. And after pausing the updates distribution, the company then made it available again, only for the issues to continue. 

Now, thankfully, there are fixes available to the public that don't involve reverting back to previous update versions. The solution comes in the form of optional updates, so you will have to install them manually.

To do this, go to > Settings > Update and Security > Windows Update > Check for updates and download the "optional quality updates" it gives you. Or you can use the following links, depending on what version of Windows you currently have.

To check your version of Windows, just hop over to > Settings > System > About and scroll down to Windows specifications.

Windows specifications version

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft explains the new update "Addresses an issue that might cause a blue screen when attempting to print to certain printers using some apps and might generate the error, APC_INDEX_MISMATCH" (via BleepingComputer).

This is good news for anyone who'd been experiencing the issue, and hopefully the BSoD issues have cleared up now. Still, it just go to show how easy it is for something simple like this to be missed during development, even for Microsoft.

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Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Screw sports, Katie would rather watch Intel, AMD and Nvidia go at it. Having been obsessed with computers and graphics for three long decades, she took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni, and has been rambling about games, tech and science—rather sarcastically—for four years since. She can be found admiring technological advancements, scrambling for scintillating Raspberry Pi projects, preaching cybersecurity awareness, sighing over semiconductors, and gawping at the latest GPU upgrades. Right now she's waiting patiently for her chance to upload her consciousness into the cloud.