This week’s Patch Tuesday breaks Mobile Hotspot in all Windows versions

This week's patches are what users have been waiting for with high expectations. Finally Microsoft brought Desktop Spotlight into the production version of Windows 11 as a stable "B" update (not optional). However, along with new features Windows has got a new portion of bugs. One of them is already confirmed and affects all Windows versions, starting from Windows 11 and ending with Windows 7.

The bug is related to the Hotspot functionality. It allows you to turn your PC or laptop into a wireless router. This way you can share you broadband Internet with all other devices that include Wi-Fi. It is a great feature when you don't have a wireless router, or it is aged or died. For example, if you have a modern laptop with Wi-Fi 6, it may share the wired Internet faster than the N router you could get years before.

The bug affects this functionality is a bad way. When you set up a mobile hotspot, it causes Windows to drop the main connection to the Internet.

After installing KB5014697, Windows devices might be unable use the Wi-Fi hotspot feature. When attempting to use the hotspot feature, the host device might lose the connection to the internet after a client device connects.

Affected platforms:

• ​​Client: Windows 11, version 21H2; Windows 10, version 21H2; Windows 10, version 21H1; Windows 10, version 20H2; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2016; Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB; Windows 8.1; Windows 7 SP1
• ​​Server: Windows Server 2022; Windows Server, version 20H2; Windows Server 2019; Windows Server 2016; Windows Server 2012 R2; Windows Server 2012; Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1; Windows Server 2008 SP2

The only "workaround" available to this moment of writing is to stop using the Mobile Hotspot feature. This is what Microsoft suggests on the Health Dashboard website.

Of course you can try to uninstall the latest patch, but this will remove everything new it has add to the OS. It is not known if the issue goes deep into the OS and affects third-party tools, or you can still use a third-party app like Connectify to create a hotspot without using the Settings app.