KB5077181 was released about a month ago as part of the February Patch Tuesday rollout. When the update first arrived, users reported a wide range of problems, including boot loops, login errors, and installation issues.
Microsoft has now acknowledged another problem linked to the same update. Some affected users see the message “C:\ is not accessible – Access denied” when trying to open the system drive.
But it can boot into Windows, which is also on the C drive? So it’s not locking users out of the C drive, it’s locking users out of parts of the C drive.
The boot process isn’t an user process, Windows would still be able to use the C:/ drive for itself, for every other user software though, that’s another story…