windows

From: Susan Bradley

To: Mr. Satya Nadella, Mr. Carlos Picoto and Mr. Scott Guthrie

Dear Sirs:

Today, as Windows 10 turns three years old, I am writing to you to ensure that you are aware of the dissatisfaction your customers have with the updates released for Windows desktops and servers in recent months. The quality of updates released in the month of July, in particular, has placed customers in a quandary: install updates and face issues with applications, or don’t install updates and leave machines subject to attack.

To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft’s July 2018 series of patching missteps, with .Net security patches in particular, have left many admins in the lurch. Less than two weeks after they were first unleashed, poorly documented versions of the patches now appear to be available, but are not being actively pushed. There’s no indication from Microsoft if and/or when they’ll be fixed.

These patches, originally released on Patch Tuesday, July 10, are baring their FAANGs:

• KB 4340556 — Security and Quality Rollup updates for .Net Framework 3.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1 and 4.7.2 for Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1
• KB 4340557 — Security and Quality Rollup updates for .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, and 4.7.2 for Windows Server 2012
• KB 4340558 — Security and Quality Rollup updates for .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, and 4.7.2 for Windows 8.1, RT 8.1, and Server 2012 R2
• KB 4340559 — Security and Quality Rollup updates for .Net Framework 2.0 SP2, 3.0 SP2, 4.5.2, and 4.6 for Windows Server 2008

The patches had been out for less than a day when we started seeing error reports on AskWoody. As I noted on July 12:

To read this article in full, please click here

If you’re trying to apply this month’s patches — an exercise in futility that I continue to discourage — you may have found that this month’s patches and their documentation read like a da Vinci script, mirrored upside down and backwards.

Take this astounding bit of bafflegab, from the official Microsoft Exchange blog:

To read this article in full, please click here

In what is becoming a common occurrence, Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday brought along so many bugs that they necessitated a remediation round. This month, unusually, it took only six days to get the exterminators out.

Since these fixes are aimed at four specific bugs introduced on Patch Tuesday, they don’t include the massive patches normally appearing on the second Patch Whateverday of the month. My guess is we’ll see at least one more big set of Windows patches before the month is out. Oh, boy.

Windows July patches, version 2

Yesterday, Monday, July 16, Microsoft released 27 new security patches for Windows, bringing the total number of patches so far this month up to 156. The new patches fall into six separate groups:

To read this article in full, please click here