Security

Microsoft has just fessed up to a couple of the known bugs in this month’s Win10 version 1709 cumulative update, KB 4054517 – in particular, the stall at 99% download, and the completely bogus warning that the patch had failed to install with error 0x80070643. Sadly, several other problems with KB 4054517 have not been acknowledged. Yet.

In addition, we have new mea culpas for the November Patch Tuesday security update for Excel 2016, KB 4011220, which throws a “Cannot run the macro” warning, and for this month’s Patch Tuesday security fix for Microsoft Exchange, KB 4045655.

As usual, I’m seeing reports thatMicrosoft tech support staff don’t know about the problems, haven’t read the KB articles, and are recommending that people re-install Windows.

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It’s hard to remember the last time we had a Patch Tuesday as inoffensive as this month’s. February 2017 comes to mind — but then again, we didn’t have a Patch Tuesday in February, as Microsoft called it off.

Part of the reason for the relatively easy going this month, I’m convinced, is the lack of attention showered on Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows 10 (including the Fall Creators Update, version 1703, which has become more-or-less fully baked and remains my version of choice). Aside from a few lackluster security patches, the December update for Win10 1607 fixed the “CDPUserSvc_XXXX has stopped working” bug introduced in a security patch two months ago, and the rest is largely routine.

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