Issues with opening XPS files in Windows 10/11 were confirmed

Even though Redmond officials continuously state that Windows 11 is all about quality, no operating system can be perfect and problems sometimes appear when you expect them the least.

Earlier today we spoke about how Windows 11-ready CPUs with VAES are susceptible to data damage, and it’s time to raise another alarm when it comes to Microsoft-designed operating systems.

Microsoft has just issued a notification for both Windows 10 and 11 users about a new known issue in the OS.

XPS files won’t open on Windows 10 and Windows 11

Judging from what we read on the Windows Health Dashboard documentation page, Windows currently struggles with opening specific XPS documents (Microsoft’s alternative to Adobe PDF, which has nothing to do with the Dell XPS lineup).

After installing KB5014666 or later updates, XPS Viewer might be unable to open XML Paper Specification (XPS) documents in some non-English languages, including some Japanese and Chinese character encodings.

Note that the above-mentioned issue affects both XML Paper Specification (XPS) and Open XML Paper Specification (OXPS) files.

When encountering this issue, you may receive an error like This page cannot be displayed within XPS Viewer or it might stop responding and have high CPU usage with continually increasing memory usage.

The Redmond tech giant also said that, when the error is encountered, if XPS Viewer is not closed it might reach up to 2.5GB of memory usage before closing unexpectedly.

Besides the inability to open XPS and OXPS documents in non-English languages, XPS Viewer stops responding and starts hogging CPU and RAM resources until it crashes upon reaching 2.5GB of RAM usage.

Microsoft officials stated that the problem originates from KB5014666 and KB5014666 (Windows 10 19044.1806 and Windows 11 22000.778), which were released on June 26 and 28.

The tech colossus is now busy investigating the bug and promises to release a fix in the upcoming releases. Unfortunately, there are no temporary workarounds.

Please keep in mind that the problem will not even bother the vast majority of regular Windows 10 consumers in any way, shape, or form.

Besides the fact that the XPS format failed to gain traction, Microsoft has since stopped bundling Windows 10 with XPS Viewer in version 1803.

That being said, you can install XPS Viewer as an optional Windows component in the Settings app, if that is what you want.

Have you experienced such issues? Share your thoughts with us in the dedicated comments section located below.