Microsoft has issued optional updates to fix XPS in WPF-based apps

In December 2022, Microsoft has released KB5022083, a security update that changes how .NET Framework and .NET handle XPS content. So many apps built with WPF started to render incorrectly. While Microsoft provided a workaround along with the release of the patch, the issue still affects plenty of users.

Due to the changes in .NET, XPS documents with structural or semantic elements like table structure, storyboards, or hyperlinks may not display correctly in WPF-based readers. It may also break inline images. The app that show the XPS data may throw Null reference exceptions when XPS documents are loaded into WPF-based readers.

As a workaround, Microsoft suggested running the following command as Administrator in cmd.exe:

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Windows Presentation Foundation\XPSAllowedTypes" /v "DisableDec2022Patch" /t REG_SZ /d "*" /reg:64

Finally, the Redmond firm managed to resolve the issue with the following out-of-band updates. Note that none of them are available via Windows Update, so you have to install them manually.

Finally, if you are about to go with one of these KBs, it is a good idea to undo any workaround you have used before installing it. For the above mentioned command, you can run this undo command, again as Administrator:

reg delete "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\Windows Presentation Foundation\XPSAllowedTypes" /reg:64 /f

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