Another big batch of patches, with a mystery patch and 46 mildly interesting ones

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If you’re an admin, though, there’s a lot to slog through. InfoWorld Woody on Windows
[See the full post at: Another big batch of patches, with a mystery patch and 46 mildly interesting ones]

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It might be slim pickings for the Win 7/8 crowd, but when it comes to updates no news is good news.

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Amen, bro…

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@Woody,

A bit Off Topic.
A friend is running W7 Home, SP1, x64.
She wants to upgrade to IE 11 from IE9.
She has IE11 in her Windows Update queue and it’s been there for some time. Some people recommend going to the MS site others say do it right from Windows update.

I honestly don’t know which way to tell her is the “safest” way to upgrade. I did have her download GWX Control Panel, set it to monitor and I told her to wait until I get some advice from the experts at AskWoody.

Any advice you can pass along? This friend is just an average home user…and she’s scared of the unwanted repercussions. And this is what MSFT is doing to the average user: scaring the hell out of them.

Thanks in advance.

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Go ahead and run it through Windows Update. There are few, if any, differences.

Just make sure she keeps IE updated, but warn her to not use IE. Anything else is preferable.

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Please be aware that there are pre-requisites to IE11. If any of those are blocked, then IE11 would not install. At other times it is just a waiting game, due to cached information in the updating mechanism which needs to expire, although this is unlikely to be the case now. Pay attention in particular to the platform update KB2670838 which is marked as Optional and unhide it if it was hidden before. I posted not long ago that I made a decision few months ago to go ahead and install everything from Windows Update on Windows 7 except KB3035583 exactly due to Microsoft blurring the lines between various categories of patches, but here you may wish to follow Woody’s generic advice which is ‘safer’ in many way, although rarely it can potentially create this sort of functionality problems, while avoiding others.
I had my share of issues when IE10 was released and when I upgraded and did a lot of research at that time, however there is no unique solution.
There is also a useful log at C:WindowsIE11_main.log which can give some clues about why the installation does not proceed.

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Woody, first thank you for mentioning one of my posts on the InfoWorld site. I tried commenting there in the past as you know, but I still have issues with that site generating errors. I tried mainly Chrome for few times, but Firefox too without success. AskWoody works flawlessly instead
I would add to the list of mysteries about the patches released recently in relation to the Windows 7 test VM waiting for the upgrade to Windows 10 to pop-up by itself. This VM has the tray notification about the upgrade but is considered incompatible in the hardware sense, although it can be upgraded without issues from the Windows 10 ISO and this is well documented.
I identified 2 different issues in the Windows Update log which I cannot yet explain other than the WU site going through a kind of transition to something new.
The first is a patch which I cannot identify. The log claims that there are 11 patches waiting to be installed, while I have 1 Important (Recommended – .NET Framework 4.6.1) unchecked and 9 Optional unchecked. For the remaining 11th I have a GUID which is impossible to be identified on Google or the Microsoft Catalog. It may appear in the future though. I don’t have a KB number.
The other issue is about another update which is currently throttled by the Microsoft Regulation Server and I would associate it with the Windows 10 Upgrade, however again I could not find any information associated with its GUID except for a post in February 2016 from someone who posted a log without much detail or any solution.
I suppose it is still a waiting game at least until next regular Patch Tuesday when we may have more clarity about what has happened with this huge list of current releases.

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FYI — KB3103709 — Checked with Microsoft Technical Support — This Optional Update KB3103709, is a SCAM … It will CRASH your Computer … searched for more info. — http://easyviruskilling.com/how-can-i-remove-update-kb3103709-popup-removal-guide/

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Not sure who you checked with. If it appears as an optional update, I would be very surprised if it were a scam, or a piece of intentional malware. If it appears as a pop-up (which is what the easyviruskillin.com article says), then it’s obviously malware — Microsoft doesn’t distribute updates as pop-ups.

I’ve never seen a non-Microsoft product in Windows Update. If it ever were to happen, we’d be in all sorts of deep dreck.

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That site is obviously a scam trying to either sell SpyHunter or infect end-user computers with something.

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