Well, my *guess* appears to be wrong. One of my tablets, that does Not use secure boot, seems to have suffered from the bug in this month's patch, restarting with a brief error message on a black screen after Win11 shut down at 99%+ installation. The message was too brief to read more than something about Windows had a problem, then it displayed a message that Windows is being updated, eventually winding back up in Win11. Once in Win11, Windows Update was already in the process of downloading the patch [again], so as fast as I could I entered the command in my earlier post to add the key to the registry [huge fun on a minuscule touch screen keyboard]. Installing the patch the 2nd time took a small fraction of the time it took originally, and that 2nd try worked.
They Should have included a check in the update, and added the key as part of that update when necessary, but the fact they didn't points to a larger problem with Microsoft. Every mid to large sized company has employees who are lazy, incompetent, could care less etc., and it's management's job to catch their goof-ups, but it seems Microsoft's management suffers from the same problems.
Perhaps to counter widespread criticism that Microsoft doesn't take security seriously, Microsoft came out with their driver blacklist. Then someone expanded it, apparently by looking at lists of drivers that had been found to be vulnerable. Unfortunately whatever idgit never bothered to look at version numbers, e.g., the patched version of a Macrium Reflect driver is blocked, despite passing through Virus Total with flying colors. That probably upset millions of users, while Microsoft has remained silent in the face of the backlash.
A security researcher tried to notify Microsoft of a bug, and they blew him off to the extent that he vowed revenge, perhaps hoping that would shock someone into reforming that part of Microsoft. He's published 4 zero day exploits so far, each one independently verified, with no response from Microsoft. Another security researcher found a critical flaw in Microsoft software used by corp. IT, but Microsoft blew him off. He started the process of reporting it to the CVE folks [a worldwide organization that tracks vulnerabilities] but Microsoft stopped them from testing and reporting on the bug. Then Microsoft patched it silently, claiming to the world that it didn't patch anything, despite the researcher having proof. Then there was Microsoft's very public insistence that Edge loading all stored passwords in memory in plain text was an intended feature, despite no other browser doing so. Saturday, the 15th, Microsoft publicly announced that Edge would no longer do that in the future. After coming down hard, restricting the speech, & even firing employees who spoke out that they personally did not like the role that Microsoft's cloud was playing in Gaza, Microsoft later placed control of their Israeli operations with their offices in France, because those in charge of their Israel operations had been naughty.
*To me* it seems like Microsoft's actively trying to destroy what little trust anyone still has in the company. When I read people that *should* know better write that Defender is good enough, I have to ask: "For What?" And I generally ignore the fanboys when they buy into Microsoft's claims that they're gonna fix Windows. Windows is a HUGE collection of old code, some dating back to Windows 3.1. Every time they could have modernized some of the core parts over the years, they said nah, we'll make something look different and that'll be good enough. So now they've still got a HUGE amount of old code from the days of 286/386 processors, plus a HUGE amount of slightly less old code patching things on top of it, and then the newer Win10 & 11 stuff that was slapped on haphazardly... Every time Microsoft comes out with a new design language they say they're going to implement it across Windows, but they never have. Long story short, when you use Win11, you're also using Win3.1, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinME, XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win8.1, Win10, & Win11. Parts of each and every one of those versions is still there. Fixing Windows would be a monumental exercise, *IF* you didn't persist in laying off several thousands of people at a time to pay for AI.
