|
Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
The guesses were right. Late today, January 4, Microsoft released the usual Patch Tuesday Monthly Rollup for Windows 7. KB 4056894 2018-01 Security Mo
[See the full post at: Windows 7 Monthly Rollup patch is out]
Internet Explorer fixes are included also.
Are you using MSE? It is supposed to be compatible with the Jan patches already.
If you are not offered the Rollup through Windows Update, your Anti-Virus vendor may not have tested that your AV program is compatible and put the RegAllow subkey in the Registry. You may be able to install the patch manually, but doing so may leave you open for a BSOD.
Woody is using a test machine. If you manually install the patch now on a production machine, you may find you are a Guinea Pig.
Use caution. And we are still under DEFCON 2.
Are you using MSE? It is supposed to be compatible with the Jan patches already. If you are not offered the Rollup through Windows Update, your Anti-Virus vendor may not have tested that your AV program is compatible and put the RegAllow subkey in the Registry. You may be able to install the patch manually, but doing so may leave you open for a BSOD. Woody is using a test machine. If you manually install the patch now on a production machine, you may find you are a Guinea Pig. Use caution. And we are still under DEFCON 2.
FYI. I use Avast! as my anti-virus. I checked and version 17.9.2322 does put the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\QualityCompat registry key in place. Therefore, the Windows 7 patch should be offered to me, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll let you know when I see it, but of course I’m going to wait before installing.
I posted anonymously at 12:44am on January 5. I only registered because I got tired of waiting for anything I posted to pass the “moderation” phase. (smile)
Thanks Woody et al, for the site and all the helpful comments!
Just when I think I am out, they PULL ME BACK IN! (sigh)
#156387 “Just when I think I am out, they PULL ME BACK IN!”
““Never let anyone know what you are thinking.” VC
Don’t panic!
I can understand the concern. I have a Core 2 Duo laptop that I like a lot (using it now to write this), and it’s a dead match for the Athlon 2 64 6400+ in Geekbench (which is only a slight bit above your 6000+; I doubt anyone would even notice the difference between the two Athlons). I don’t want to lose any of its performance either, as it suits my purposes just fine, and I would like to keep using it. I would not characterize it as very slow, though– you might find that a RAM boost or a SSD could do wonders for it, if the budget allows.
I have no intention of running any patched OS that causes any noticeable performance loss. We’re still in the “sky is falling” period now; we don’t really know what the actual fallout from this is going to be in real terms. Any patches offered by Microsoft in a hurry-hurry rush to get the bug fixed now while everyone’s still in a panic mode (even though no attack in the wild has ever used this yet) are not likely to be the last word on the topic. Haste doesn’t tend to support writing good code! Something will be pushed out quick by all of the OS makers so that no one can claim they sat on their heels and did nothing while the world burned, but any optimizations that will make those code changes truly livable haven’t been done yet. Changes to browser .js engines (the prime threat for those of us who don’t run just anything on our PCs; hopefully that’s all of us reading this forum) that mitigate the threat have just begun as well (Firefox has one out already), and any efforts to add anti-Meltdown/Spectre heuristic detection to anti-malware programs haven’t produced any results yet (or even been announced, that I know of, though I’d be shocked if every one of them was not scrambling to do this).
On top of that, it’s not been established that older AMD designs like yours are susceptible to Meltdown or not. So far, we’ve heard that AMD CPUs aren’t, but are they truly talking about all of them, or just the recent ones?
It may become impossible to feasibly keep using Windows without taking the patch, even for AMD CPUs that are ostensibly immune to Meltdown, given that the architectural changes required will be so deep that it will become the new normal for Windows. Even if AMD CPUs can run the old code relatively securely (excepting Spectre), it may not matter if all the antimalware programs and other kernel-level programs have to change to the new way in order for their products to keep working.
Fortunately, Linux offers the ability to turn the mitigation for these exploits off if you want… and if the performance decrease is anything bothersome to me, I will turn it off unless and until I perceive the threat to me to be great enough to justify it (and that applies to Windows too). I’m already actively pursuing the migration to Linux in the wake of Microsoft’s apparent efforts to destroy the Windows platform; this may be just one more thing that hits the gas on that one.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
Thanks.
I understand the “rush rush” approach and I am waiting for the all clear from Woody. That is why I came here a few years ago. I only registered recently because I never really felt the need to post anything.
When I first read (on AMD’s site) that the risk was minimal on AMD chips, that made me feel a little better. But, then of course, MS reared its ugly head and started this whole mess with the (continuation) of bad patches. Again, the reason why I am here.
I know Firefox has supposedly patched v57 and up, but I am still using the ESR release because of the way 57 broke so many extensions and add-ons, and essentially crippled as many more with “webextensions”. FF is now essentially Chrome and if I had wanted Chrome, I would have installed Chrome.
I have been using NoScript for years, so I do have some control over java-script.
I too am looking at moving to a Linux OS in the near future. For me, the headaches and privacy intrusions that come with MS are getting to be too much.
The really scary part is that Spectre may not be fixable without new CPU architecture and that means a lot of people are going to be SOL if they can’t afford to buy the new hardware. Hopefully, this will not end up being the case, but I’m not holding my breath at this point.
Thanks again for your reply!
#156915 “I know Firefox has supposedly patched v57 and up, but I am still using the ESR release because of the way 57 broke so many extensions…”
Why did ESR 52 not get a Meltdown / Spectre patch like Fx57
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3037113
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2018-01/
Fixed in Firefox 57.0.4, SharedArrayBuffer is already disabled in Firefox 52 ESR.
According to https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar, Firefox ESR 52.6 is scheduled to be released on January 23.
This is so annoying. Windows 8.1 is still in mainstream support but is neglected completely. The article Microsoft published on the issue:
does not even mention 8.1. That’s why I encourage all the ones that are not too keen to embrace Windows 10 to move to 8.1. The more of us, the more support MS will be (hopefully) forced to provide to us. I’m afraid that with such low market share, when W7 support is ended in 2020, there will be no other option but Windows 10 for W8.1 will be completely dead (something like W10M now – you get monthly updates, but that’s just patching holes).
Couple of day delay wouldn’t hurt Windows 8.1 falls in area between Users-beloved Windows 7 and Microsoft-beloved Windows 10 so it will always left behind for me it’s the best of both of them
It’s still in MAINSTREAM SUPPORT. Should be fixed at the same time W10 is. Of course, I’m in no hurry, will wait until MSI publishes BIOS update and it’s benchmarked. While you can uninstall and update or reinstall Windows, with BIOS I guess you can’t reflash with an older version.
The real mainstream support for Windows 8.1 ended July 29, 2015, regardless of what the official story line may be.
Windows 7 was released with a new version of DirectX, but that was soon backported to Vista, which was at that time in mainstream support, and which had strong architectural similarities to 7.
Windows 10 was released with a new version of DirectX, but that will never be backported to 8.1, which was then and is still now in mainstream support, and which has strong architectural similarities to 10.
In practice, there’s been no difference in the way 8.1 and 7 receive patches. Win 8.1 isn’t being modified to enable the new CPU architectures that supposedly require the wondrous new Windows 10 kernel to work (which is nearly identical to the 8.1 kernel). They both have received the same patches for the same things since Windows 10 landed.
Microsoft can’t be trusted to honor their own support periods if they conflict with their marketing plans. They think nothing of imposing serious costs and obligations on their customers and claiming it’s for their own good when anyone can clearly see that Microsoft is the only beneficiary. They are not acting as a trustworthy partner. It has turned adversarial, and it’s all their doing.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
I haven’t received any of the updates on my Win7 or Win10 systems. The registry key is there and Avast is compatible. What could be wrong?
Check your Registry. You anti-virus has to add a subkey to make you eligible for the update. This has to be present signifying that your AV is compatible. (Otherwise it may cause a BSOD)
Key=”HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” Subkey=”SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\QualityCompat” Value=”cadca5fe-87d3-4b96-b7fb-a231484277cc”
Type=”REG_DWORD”
Try this one by @GrossTheDog
We are still on DEFCON 2!!! WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT
It’s time for testers who know how to recover from BSODs and the like, and have adequate backups, to see what problems there are. This is a major kernel update.
Or you can be a Guinea Pig.
Hi,
I got BSOD on Windows 7 machines on Asus M2A-MX / DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2100 MHz (10.5 x 200) 4000+ – even Safe mode – BSOD (strange error 0x00000c4 0x0000000000091 – it was actually NOT a standard BSOD!). There was update kb4056894 automatically installed.
How did I recover ? I’m not using System restore, so going to RECOVERY CONSOLE and running : dism.exe /image:E:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions
(E: drive is where my system in Recovery Console is)
Installed updates yesterday so I could start testing before rolling out to clients at a later time.
2 Win10 machines (older i5 models for kids and grand kids use) with no slowdowns or issues reported so far.
1 Win7 machine I7. On login this morning the mouse cursor was not visible. Never did that before. Right-click desktop and refresh restored it. No noticeable slowdowns or issues other than that.
1. AMD CPU and Windows 7 Pro x86. MSE, key in registry present. BSOD after install of kb4056894.
2. AMD CPU and Windows 7 Pro x64. 360 TSE, key in registry added manually. Normal boot after install of kb4056894.
I am not a techie, I am a simple users. My first PC was a 386 machine a friend built for me in 1988. I know less today than I did then about what makes things work. I also know I was many 100s of times safer when I first began online than I am today.
I have never done the Windows Monthly Security and Quality Roll-ups. I do not trust Microsoft enough for that. However, I do the monthly Security only roll-ups. I usually wait 7 – 10 days after they are released to determine if they do anything harmful. I do not use any of the mainstream browsers, I use Pale Moon which was secure from these two attacks already. Plus it is non-invasive and privacy respectful.
I also have not had an Intel cpu for the past 15+ years. AMD has been my preference staring with Windows XP. I have never visited an app store. I have used the same 5 browser extensions for many years (first on FireFox and now on P M). I changed Ad-blockers to use the one most compatible with my current browser. Flash player does not automatically run anywhere and I have the final ESR version when I must use it.
What I have learned is one stays safe in the digital age by moderating their own behavior moreso than anything else they might try in terms of hardware or software.
One important trick is not to use anything that makes you the actual product. AKA, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
Hi Woody and Group:
I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 running a Windows 7 SP1 platform.
When I tried to apply the above Windows Automatic Update, it caused my computer to crash. The system rebooted to the Windows Start screen and crashed. Then it kept rebooting in a continuous loop.
I had to insert my installation CD and selected, “Repair My Computer” and then selected System Restore to the last previous restore point to get my computer back to a normal state of operation again.
Apparently, the above update is not compatible with my computer although it states the update is compatible with, “Windows 7 SP1.” Or the entire update file is corrupt?
That’s my observations of the above update. I e-mailed Woody,and he suggested I post this for everyone to see.
Thank you!
Nick
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, MS Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Installed KB4056894 and BSOD at reboot; recovered system at last restore point and all ok.
Re-installed KB4056894 and BSOD at reboot; recovered system at last restore point. Now I have hidden the update.
Fufu
The December patches are safe to install. The January patches are under DEFCON 2.
If the January patch is not available, and the December patch has not been installed, the Dec patch will show up in Win Update because the January patch which superseded it is no longer there. When the Jan patch shows up, it supersedes the Dec patch and the Dec patch will no longer be offered.
That is why, when you hide the Jan patch, the Dec patch shows up if it hasn’t been installed. If you hide the Dec patch, the Nov patch will show up if it hasn’t been installed. And so on.
The Win8.1 Jan patch was reissued.
Perhaps the Win7 patch was also revised. If it was temporarily pulled then reissued, that would explain the Dec patch showing up for a while then being replaced by the Jan one again.
Installed MS 2018-01 KB4056894 on my Win7 SP1 with Norton AV. At Restart got message “Your computer was unable to start”. After startup repair, got message “can not repair this computer automatically. The Startup repair diagnosis and repair log said “Root cause found: A patch is preventing the system from starting”.
Win7 SP1 with Dec 2017 update. Norton AV. Dell Optiplex 740.
Boot from your Rescue Disk to access System Restore. Restore to a point before the update install. Set Windows Update to “Never check for updates” and wait to install any updates.
Donations from Plus members keep this site going. You can identify the people who support AskWoody by the Plus badge on their avatars.
AskWoody Plus members not only get access to all of the contents of this site -- including Susan Bradley's frequently updated Patch Watch listing -- they also receive weekly AskWoody Plus Newsletters (formerly Windows Secrets Newsletter) and AskWoody Plus Alerts, emails when there are important breaking developments.
