Microsoft releases 24 optional Windows patches

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Here’s the overview Microsoft forgot to give us. InfoWorld Woody on Windows
[See the full post at: Microsoft releases 24 optional Windows patches]

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KB3144850 appears among optional updates offered to install on my desktop PC running Windows 8.1 Pro 32bit. According to article KB3144850 applies to Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Enterprise and Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry Pro. Is Microsoft mistakenly sending KB3144850 to Windows 8.1 Pro systems?

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Good catch. As best I can tell, you’re right (the update applies to Win 8.1) and the KB article is all wrong.

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Some more data points…

I had a Win 8.1 Enterprise system fully up to date as of April 15.

Today I see only 11 optional updates newly available:

KB3103616 (WMI query fix)
KB3103709 (WS 2012 R2 domain controller update)
KB3125424 (LSASS dedlock fix for WS 2012 R2)
KB3138378 (Update for Journal.dll binary)
KB3144474 (TFS application pool Certreq.exe crash)
KB3145384 (MinDiffAreaFileSize limit increased)
KB3146604 (WMI service crash fix for WS 2012 R2)
KB3146627 (Network drives DNS namespace map fix)
KB3146751 (Logon not possible App-V on WS 2012 R2)
KB3146978 (RDS redir degraded performance fix)
KB3149157 (TCP/IP reliability fixes Win 8.1/WS 2012 R2)

-Noel

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I received 11 optional updates, all on April 19.

Windows 8.1 64 bit.

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Just got these updates on my Win7SP1x64 laptop.
WU set to never ck.

8 important & checked.

KB3146706 22,0 MB

KB2952664 4,6 MB

KB3035583 721 KB – 820 KB Hello Again! Was hidden

KB3133977 1,1 MB

KB3137061 72 KB

KB3138901 269 KB

KB3147071 20,9 MB

KB3148851 409 KB

5 Optional, unchecked not italicized

MS Silverlight KB3106614

MSE KB 21310138 (definition 1.217.1832.0

Win7x64 KB3138378

Win7x64 KB3139923

Win7x64 KB3130245

JF

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Forgot to add that first two important were hidden also
JF

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I think this is not the first time when it happens. If I remember well, around June 2014 a patch for Windows 8.1 Embedded was offered to Windows 2012 R2 Server via WU. It didn’t cause any harm, although it was likely provided to the server only for keeping various Operating Systems in sync from a versioning point of view.

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From the InfoWorld article: “Documentation is kind of an afterthought for Microsoft these days.”

This is what Wikipedia says, so it must be documented somewhere at Microsoft I think: “Patch Tuesday occurs on the second, and sometimes fourth, Tuesday of each month in North America. As far as the integrated Windows Update function is concerned, Patch Tuesday begins at 18:00 or 17:00 UTC (10:00 PST (UTC−8) or 10:00 PDT (UTC−7).[6] The updates show up in Download Center before they are added to WU, and the KB articles and the Technet bulletin are unlocked later.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Tuesday

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I have 15 available for a test machine with Windows 2012R2 with IIS and WSUS fully patched. Probably the remainder of them are for other configurations or levels of patching or components on the server which I don’t have installed. Some of them may be exclusively for Windows 8.1 and not the server.
I think at this stage they are still Optional being released outside of the main Patch Tuesday. Some of them will likely be promoted to Important and I think this is the new way for Microsoft to test for early issues. By having them Optional, they delegate the responsibility or at least part of it to the users until the patches are flagged as Recommended or Critical.

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@Noel & Woody,

KB3103709 was the “mystery patch”:
https://www.askwoody.com/2016/mystery-continues-with-microsofts-unidentified-patch-c/

Accordingly to article KB3103709 applies only to Windows Server 2012 R2 editions (presumably only to Domain Controller servers). Microsoft is either mistakenly sending KB3103709 to Windows 8.1 Pro Systems, or the KB Article documentation should be updated (to reflect that the update also applies to Windows 8.1). If the update does NOT apply to Windows 8.1 then one should look for it

dism /online /get-packages | findstr KB3103709

and remove it:

dism /online /remove-package /PackageName:Package_for_KB3103709~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.2.1

Right?

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Correct analysis – but I don’t know if it’s appropriate for Win 8.1 Pro….

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Yep, but Microsoft doesn’t do that any more…. we had patches on 11 of the 22 business days last month. http://www.infoworld.com/article/3052307/microsoft-windows/heres-the-rundown-on-microsofts-latest-non-security-office-patches.html

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Then, who knows? Microsoft is big, they have teams for Server OS, Desktop OS, maybe Phone OS, Office and as we found out recently a team for WSUS. They may not know what the other teams are doing and each releasing according to their own schedule and some documenting, some not.

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I don’t think it should be removed if it is still offered on Windows Update and there are no indications that the patch will be retired.
I say this because Microsoft testers tend to do most of their testing on typical machines with what most users would have installed and this protects you in the future if you have a typical installation with typical updates.
Saying that, I have been following this Windows Update game in detail, following Woody and doing my own testing since mid-2014 and while there have been many failed patches which I had installed early and later uninstalled when they were retired, I never experienced a system wide failure as reported by many other users. This is likely because I don’t use customisations just because I can for no reason and outside of the normal supported guidelines and if I do when there is no other way, I try to understand their implications in detail.
As an example, there is the current Outlook 2013 patch KB3114941 which has not been causing any issues for me on 3 computers, no errors in the Event Logs, but as Microsoft recommends to uninstall, I have already done it to avoid future problems and keep the system clean. And I am not taking Woody’s word for it before reading the KB article myself, but Woody’s research is how I found about the issue in the first place.

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@Noel;
“Noel Carboni says:
April 21, 2016 at 10:52 am

Some more data points…
I had a Win 8.1 Enterprise system fully up to date as of April 15.
Today I see only 11 optional updates newly available:”

I got the same ones.
Have you installed them? Any problems?

JF

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I was reading through the KB3140245 documentation and was wondering if this patch may offer a solution to slow updates.

Background: A while ago I noticed that the http access on the Microsoft Update Catalog site was slow and random, while by using https instead, the access was fast and as expected. This is true for the KB articles hosted at Microsoft too, which may indicate a more common problem with the Microsoft sites while transitioning from http to https.
The current recommendation is to use https everywhere on the Internet where possible and not http. The https implementation require a valid certificate to provide encryption and extra effort and expense at the web hosting provider.

Windows Update access is normally performed using the WinHTTP subsystem of Windows which can be thought of as the protocol used by the Operating System to access web sites, or any other access using http or https. It is like a built-in mini-browser without a user interface, accessed programatically.

KB3140425 offers further tuning of the https protocol by using registry keys implemented after the patch is installed to prioritise the https protocol to be used by WinHTTP.
It seems complicated and I would not recommend tuning production machines at this stage until there is more information available.
The patch installation seems reliable though, although not required, unless there is a need for testing or otherwise. KB3140425 is Optional.

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