PCs

As we near the end of patching’s “C Week” (which is to say, the week that contains the third Tuesday of the month), there are no show-stopping bugs in the Windows and Office patches and just a few gotchas. As long as you avoid Microsoft’s patches for Intel’s Meltdown/Spectre bugs, you should be in good shape.

Why a Patch Monday?

On Sept. 17, Microsoft released two very-out-of-band cumulative updates for Windows 10:

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So far this month we’ve only seen one cumulative update for each version of Windows 10, and one set of updates (Security only, Monthly Rollup) for Win7 and 8.1. With a few notable exceptions, those patches are going in rather nicely. What a difference a month makes.

We’ve also seen a massive influx of microcode updates for the latest versions of Windows 10, running on Intel processors. Those patches, released on Aug. 20 and 21, have tied many admins up in knots, with conflicting descriptions and iffy rollout sequences.

Big problems for small niches

At this point, I’m seeing complaints about a handful of patches:

• The original SQL Server 2016 SP2 patch, KB 4293807, was so bad Microsoft yanked it — although the yanking took almost a week. It’s since been replaced by KB 4458621, which appears to solve the problem.
• The Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 patch, KB 4456688, has gone through two versions — released Aug. 14, pulled, then re-released Aug. 18 — and the re-released version still has problems. There’s a hotfix available from the KB article, but you’d be well advised to avoid it.
• Outlook guru Diane Poremsky notes on Slipstick that the version of Outlook in the July Office 365 Click-to-Run won’t allow you to start Outlook if it’s already running. “Only one version of Outlook can run at a time” — even if the “other version” is, in fact, the same version.
• The bug in the Win10 1803 upgrade that resets TLS 1.2 settings persists, but there’s an out-of-the-blue patch KB 4458116 that fixes the problem for Intuit QuickBooks Desktop.
• The Win10 1803 cumulative update has an acknowledged bug in the way the Edge browser interacts with Application Guard. Since about two of you folks use that combination, I don’t consider it a big deal. The solution, should you encounter the bug, is to uninstall the August cumulative update, manually install the July cumulative update, and then re-install the August cumulative update — thus adding a new dimension to the term “cumulative.”
• The Win7 Monthly Rollup has an old acknowledged bug about “missing file (oem<number>.inf).” Although Microsoft hasn’t bothered to give us any details, it looks like that’s mostly a problem with VMware.

The rest of the slate looks remarkably clean. Haven’t seen that in a long while.

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If you ever wondered why people — and organizations — are taking longer and longer to willfully install patches, take a look at what happened this month. After a disastrous start, Windows 10 patches seem to be OK, but .NET and Server patches still stink.

For most of the year, we’ve seen two big cumulative updates every month for each of the supported Win10 versions. This month, so far, we’ve had three. Microsoft’s claim that it will install the Win7 and Win8.1 Monthly Rollups defies logic. The .NET patches are in such bad shape that the .NET devs have thrown in the towel. And here we sit not knowing exactly which way is up.

Three Win10 cumulative updates for each version in July

On Patch Tuesday, July 10, as usual, Microsoft rolled out cumulative updates for all of the supported versions of Windows 10. Almost immediately we heard screams of pain as four big bugs, later officially acknowledged, hit the fan. Six days later, Microsoft released a second set of cumulative updates, again for all versions of Win10. Those updates were specifically designed to fix the bugs introduced by the original updates. The build numbers in the Knowledge Base articles didn’t match the build numbers that people actually installed but, well, that’s Microsoft.

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Microsoft’s patches in June took on some unexpected twists.

Windows 7 owners with older, 2002-era Pentium III machines got their patching privileges revoked without warning or explanation (and a documentation cover-up to boot), but there’s little sympathy in the blogosphere for elderly PCs.

Win10 1803 was declared fully fit for business, a pronouncement that was followed weeks later by fixes for a few glaring, acknowledged bugs — and stony silence for other known problems.

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