Microsoft's efforts to continually update Windows 10 can feel like a comedy of errors. If you own a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and are suddenly encountering a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error, that's certainly the case.

Rest assured, you have done nothing wrong. The cause is a recent Windows 10 cumulative update, which apparently affects all ThinkPad models from 2019 onward.

As outlined by Lenovo in a support document (via BetaNews), affected users may experience the issue when starting the laptop, when launching Lenovo Vantage (a companion app), and when running Windows 10's built-in antivirus software, Windows Defender, and when running scans with Defender, they are likely to encounter BSODs in several situations.

It's not just blue screen errors. The update also prevents logging in using Windows Hello, kicking out errors related to both the Intel Management Engine and the IR camera.

Microsoft is aware of this issue and states that affected laptops with the update applied "limit how processes can access the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) device configuration space under certain conditions." PCI device configuration space. Processes that need to access it must use an officially supported mechanism.

According to Microsoft, ThinkPad models manufactured within the past year with the Enhanced Windows Biometric Security option in the BIOS enabled cause the problematic behavior. In such cases, the blue screen error most likely to appear is SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED.

A temporary workaround is to disable the Enhanced Windows Biometric Security option in the BIOS; once in the BIOS, it is located under the Security > Virtualization menu.