Microsoft has finally fixed a known issue that was causing systems running Windows Server 2019 and 2022 to “unexpectedly” upgrade to Windows Server 2025.
The issue was first acknowledged by Microsoft in September 2024, following widespread reports from Windows admins regarding servers that had been automatically upgraded overnight to a Windows Server version for which they didn’t even have a license.
Microsoft said that organizations that wanted to perform in-place upgrades were offered a Windows Server 2025 upgrade via a banner on the Windows Update settings page.
It also blamed the issue on third-party update management software that wasn’t correctly configured, but the software makers said the upgrade problems were caused by a “procedural error on Microsoft side, both with the speed of release and the classification.”
Microsoft didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment when BleepingComputer reached out at the time for more details on the root cause of the automated upgrades.
This week, after more than a year, Microsoft said it had finally addressed the known issue and that customers can once again check for upgrades through the Settings app.
“This issue is resolved and Microsoft has re-enabled the upgrade offer via the Windows Update settings panel,” the company said in a Windows release health update on Tuesday.
“For more information on Feature Update from the Windows Server Setting Dialog, see Perform an in-place upgrade of Windows Server at Microsoft Learn.”
Last month, Microsoft released an out-of-band update to fix the March 2026 non-security preview update pulled due to installation issues.
Less than a week earlier, it pushed another emergency update that resolved a major issue triggered by the March Patch Tuesday security updates, which broke sign-ins with Microsoft accounts across multiple Microsoft apps, including Edge, Teams, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Two other out-of-band updates were also issued last month to address a Bluetooth device visibility bug and several security vulnerabilities in the Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) management tool affecting Windows 11 Enterprise devices.
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