Batten down the hatches – beware new patches

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With Tuesday just around the corner, now is the time to make sure you’re alllllll patches up, and that automatic updates have been turned off.Hope you
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Believe it or not, there’s a new Autoplay/Autorun patch released near the end of August: KB971029

This one is newer than KB967715 but KB917029 is not available for Win2000.

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Woody: You advised to “make sure you’re all patched up”. Does that include the Cumulative Security Update for ActiveX Kilbits for Windows XP – KB973346? Still getting prompted from MS about that update on my laptop, however, the prompt stopped on the desktop even though it was not downloaded. What’s that all about?

Another thing, most times when I download MS updates there’s nothing to reflect that it’s downloading. I guess it just is. Then sometimes as much as 4-7 days later a message is received to do the installation. Why is there such a time span between the download and the update? Too much for me to figure out.

Thanks, Woody.

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Good grief. I wonder how many re-re-re-patches MS has issued for AutoPlay?

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Vaughn –

Yep, when I say get all patched up, it means you should use Windows Update or Microsoft Update (repeatedly, if necessary) to get every patch applied. Even the patches I, personally, detest – like this one.

Right now is a bad time to get patched up, though, because of the latest crop of Security Bulletins.

Windows Update’s downloading behavior bugs me, too. The alternative would be pretty daunting, though, because some people would cancel the download. The downloader works in the background, so it doesn’t interfere with much – which may be why it takes so long for you to get downloads…

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Microsoft has written some erroneous information in security bulletin MS09-047 saying the KB968816 Windows Media Format Runtime Updates replace the MS08-076 updates.

Compare the files from MS KB article 968816 and MS KB article 952069

The LOGAGENT.EXE and WMNETMGR.DLL files from KB952069 are NOT included in the KB968816 updates. So the KB968816 updates from MS09-047 do NOT replace the KB952069 updates from MS08-076. The Microsoft security team has yet to correct the information.

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KB968816 also breaks WMP10 by stopping some MP3s from playing. Something about TLEN
(Total Length) field in the ID3 tags might be the culprit. Very little on the web at the moment. All my recent VBR MP3s wouldn’t play so removed patch from desktop and laptop (voila back to normal). Seems like a pretty basic test to me to ensure that patches cause fewer problems than the security risk they are attempting to fix.

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Just to add to jebear’s comment, I posted what I believe was the initial report of this problem last week, here ( http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/t/78956.aspx ) and here ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/newsgroups/reader.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.music&tid=93b45385-c345-4fd9-9b54-a35c4a8f6d0f&cat=&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1 ).

I’d be interested if anyone else is experiencing this – there hasn’t been any response from Microsoft.

I’d be very cautious about uninstalling this update, though. It is addressing a real issue, even though its implementation has problems. I’d much rather see Microsoft release a proper fix.

gvm

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