Microsoft blinks again, promises to clean up after its Win7 mess

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Remember the bug in the latest Win7 patch — the one that turns “Stretch”ed wallpapers into black screens? Microsoft originally said (after waiting a
[See the full post at: Microsoft blinks again, promises to clean up after its Win7 mess]

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Myst, rowrbazzle, jburk07, SueW, Moonbear, abbodi86, GreatAndPowerfulTech, FakeNinja, Wheel_D, geekdom

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The larger and unasked question with implications:
Will Microsoft also provide retroactive patches for other errors found in existing Windows 7 patches?

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Steve, Moonbear, lurks about, FakeNinja, woody

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Great question and I have no idea what MS will do.

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geekdom wrote:

The larger and unasked question with implications:
Will Microsoft also provide retroactive patches for other errors found in existing Windows 7 patches?

… if they do, there’s a chance they could make matters worse in other ways. After all, MS did get rid of much of their Windows QA team.

Byte me!

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Charlie

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‘Stretch’ is a wallpaper setup option that MS made available to all users, so there is no acceptable reason for anyone to mock those who use it. Besides personal choice, there are companies that have company logos as their background wallpaper and many of these are stretched, probably because fit or centred is not to their liking. Those with a second larger monitor will know that the resolution is different from a netbook/laptop screen and the larger monitor may benefit from a stretched wallpaper look.

The most obvious location for the upcoming fix is the MS catalog – the DIY solution.

I do not see MS providing a February monthly rollup via WU to non-ESU clients.

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What’s to keep them from issuing an old-fashioned “Update for Windows 7” that shows up for everyone? I assume they will eventually do this a time or two with a “Security update” for widespread worms, etc., like they did with XP.

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Indeed what. . . just the time it takes what’s left of the Windows update team to come up with a fix.

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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Exactly

Before S14 Update KB2919355 became mandatory, Windows 8.1 RTM used to get updates specifically for systems without KB2919355

Windows 7 itself got separate IE11 patch KB4483187 on December 2018, when there was a need for it wiout new Rollup

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Moonbear, Kranium

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So they’re going to fix a wallpaper issue but not the IE exploit?  Brilliant…

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Moonbear

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IE exploit is security issue, hence covered by Extended Security Updates

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Microsoft programmers wrote the stretch issue. Microsoft programmers did not write the exploit. IE works as intended if it wasn’t for the exploit that somebody else wrote. The exploit is not directly their responsibility, even if leaving the hole is. Its a fine distinction but there is one.

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abbodi86

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[Moonbear]

I wonder if this is only happening because people started wondering if Microsoft introduced the stretch bug on purpose?

Microsoft would obviously want to stop that kind of thinking as soon as possible.

At the same time this does beg the question, wouldn’t the publicity be even worse if this bug was patched but the issue with Jscript were only patched for paying customers?

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Moonbear.

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doriel, Cybertooth, abbodi86

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I wonder if this is only happening because people started wondering if Microsoft introduced the stretch bug on purpose?

This is dangerous question. Did Armstrong and Aldrin really land on the moon? We can challenge every fact with this attitude. Do you really think, that impossibility to stretch wallpaper will force people to migrate to W10? I doubt about it.

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[FakeNinja]

Microsoft has done this before though, just look at how they blocked updates for newer processors running Windows 7 and 8.1. Why would it be paranoid to assume they’re using the same tactics again? Not saying they do in this case because that seems very unlikely to me, but Microsoft has done shady things in the past to migrate people over to Windows 10 including literally lying to their customers, so assuming the worst is not unrealistic.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by FakeNinja.

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So they want to force the folks who stretch their wallpaper to migrate to Windows 10?

Wow.

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Please keep us updated, since I’m still using November 2019 Security Patch.

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I’m glad they’re going to fix this, and I doubt they introduced the bug on purpose, since I saw reports that some Windows 10 users had the same problem.

Honestly though, I don’t get why it’s that big a deal.  It takes about ten seconds to choose an option other than ‘stretch’ in Windows settings, or a minute or two at most to load your preferred image into the editor of your choice, stretch it to the correct size, save, and choose it as your desktop background.  Anyone who’s computer-savvy enough to still be using Windows 7 at this point ought to be able to manage it easily.

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doriel, b

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I saw this on W10 too. Wallpaper went black, and if I pointed with mouse over the icons, part of the image appeared under these icon. Log out – log in and issue solved.

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But your wallpaper wasn’t “Stretch”ed, right?

I’ve seen reports of this, but it doesn’t appear to be related to the “Stretch” bug in Win7. More likely to be a video driver glitch of some sort.

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AmbularD

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I am not sure if wallpaper was stretched and I dont think it was related to this “stretch bug”, because I saw it just once on one computer of our employee. I agree it was most probably random driver problem. Sorry If my post was confusing.

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Actually, for now at least, the fix is certain only for the January S&Q Rollup, not for the Security Only patch, that has the same problem, at the moment. More about this here: #2110515  .

Looking up the corresponding Security Only’s KB4534314 in the MS Web site, one can read there that “Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues with this update”. Although there certainly are, just not being acknowledged does not mean there are none.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4534314/windows-7-update-kb4534314

So I think it is better, for those of us in Group B, to wait a bit longer before installing this month’s SO patch, in case MS changes its mind about this one as well… but it may be also a good idea not to keep holding our breath in hope for very long.

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grams, Charlie

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Waiting is good.  I like waiting when it comes to these updates!

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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FYI…

Today this fix/update got released: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4539602/wallpaper-set-to-stretch-is-displayed-as-black

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abbodi86, Microfix, woody

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[quiberon]

This has shown up on my Win 7 machine this morning.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by quiberon.

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KB4539601 is an UNCHECKED Preview. We do not recommend installing Unchecked patches or Previews.

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I haven’t installed it either, just noticed it was there that’s all.

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KB4539601 rollup recently showed up in the Optional updates section on my brother’s Sony Vaio laptop running Win7 Home premium.

though it already had both KB4534310 and the KB4539602 update installed

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