MS-DEFCON 4: Beware of clickbait

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ISSUE 22.08.1 • 2025-02-25 By Susan Bradley Don’t be taken in by ‘The sky is falling!’ headlines. It’s been my experience that what is purported to be
[See the full post at: MS-DEFCON 4: Beware of clickbait]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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abbodi86, Fred, MrToad28, lmacri, CADesertRat, DLivesInTexas, Walter, deuce120, dataman1701, LHiggins, Pim

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I would just like to add to your DEFCON article a little.

Although I never used to consider myself a “gamer” either, the past couple of years I took up flight simming in MS Flight Simulator.
As heated as the arguments go regarding whether or not flying in a simulator is a “game”, I will nod to the “gamer” crowd and accept that it is a game.

Most importantly, I have also been running 24h2 almost from the day it first became available with absolutely no noticeable problems. Now, I must admit that my Lenovo desktop t7 34IAZ7 is a bit overspeced with 128GB of RAM and 3ea. 1TB m2 ssd’s. But, I have not otherwise incorporated any special tweaks, or overclocked the CPU/GPU, either.

Accordingly, the 24H2 is also running on my wife’s lap-top and my daughter’s home-built desktop, without any noticeable issues.

So… I agree with you 100% that a lot of “the sky is falling” news regarding this release is much like many of the other events of the day – a few folks attempting to influence the masses.

Thank you, Susan, for sharing some much-needed sanity, today!

Best regards,
RD

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I did have 24H2 “pushed” onto three computers. I am a consumer. So far I have seen no difficulties. What I was concerned with was whether two peripherals would work because this has been a problem with MSFT in the past. My printer and my scanner worked with no need to re-install. That was my only concern.

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Windows updates have never left my PC’s unusable in terms of being so unstable I couldn’t use them. I do think Microsoft has become less reliable with updates since moving to Windows 10 and now 11. The OS is far more complex these days and has too many moving parts so to speak for a OS. Trying my best to lean it out has made it more stable in my opinion.

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I applied February’s patches to my Windows 11 “23H2” computer. After all the various reboots I finally got to the point where my computer started up, and I had totally black screens on all of my 3 screens. “Oh, no”, I said. I rebooted a couple of times and still saw nothing but black screens. So I decided to SHUT DOWN, not RESTART. I waited 10 seconds and then turned my computer back on. This time I saw a notice that told me that Explorer had failed 3 times and that “ExplorerPatcher” was probably the cause and I needed an update. I clicked on a link, the computer did its thing, and all became well. So if this happens to you running ExplorerPatcher, please take note and don’t panic. I did see multiple .dmp files created, but I did not investigate those further – I simply deleted them.

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MrToad28

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It’s always a good idea to update third-party tweaker Apps prior to doing updates. Microsoft changes things in the OS and the third-party devs try to keep up before the updates come out for the public.

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windbg, Alex5723, satrow, Fred

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24H2 is not “unstable” in a sense that it crashes completely, but it is glitchy and certainly has some known issues that Microsoft have been unable to fix that are dealbreakers for some people.

24h2 has been GA for what, 6 months, and it’s still full of small bugs, and every update seems to add more. Microsoft should be embarrassed that they are worried about dumb crap like renaming Office for the fifth time in 10 years instead of fixing Windows 11 to make it acceptable.

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abbodi86

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Master Patch List: Patch numbers for NET 8 and Net 9 are reversed.

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W10 22H2 update, MSRT, KB 5051974, SSU 10.0.19045.5425. The updates took forever to download. I thought maybe my ISP just slowed down but that was not the case. Download kept bouncing back and forth from 2 Mbps to 512 Kbps or lower. Once finally downloaded, the installation went fine.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does 🙂
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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MrToad28

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Update went smooth.

2025-02 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5051989)

 

Windows 11 Pro
Version 23H2
OS build 22631.4890

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MrToad28

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I saw the headline “Beware of clickbait” and clicked on it immediately 😉

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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Cybertooth, NaNoNyMouse

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An alternative to using a phone/tablet instead of Firefox ESR on Windows 7, is to run Linux in a virtual machine that supports a Windows 7 host (like Virtualbox 6), and run an up-to-date Firefox instance there.

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Cybertooth

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Win 10 – went to start update but it gave me error code 0x80244022 on this months big cumulative update. Error code seemed to indicate a problem serverside so I tried again and it worked normally.

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MrToad28

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When I installed the February updates on my Windows 10 Home laptop,  the Security Update KB5050411 installed as part of the February updates despite the fact it had already installed successfully as part of the January updates which I had installed on 2/2/2025, as shown in the update history.  After the installation finished,  it showed up in the update history as successfully installed on 3/3/2025,  but the one for 2/2/2025 had disappeared from the update history.  Why did this happen?   And is there anything I need to do about it?

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Win7and10

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As updates are cumulative it may be MS saying they have superceded the previous?

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

As updates are cumulative it may be MS saying they have superceded the previous?

Paul T:  I don’t know; I don’t have enough knowledge to answer that question.  But it looks like someone else under another forum on this website has said something similar about KB5050411.  At Posting #2746865 an AskWoody Lounger named  Win7and10 said:  “after my computer restarted and settled in, KB5050411 was no longer in my history of installations. Why would it disappear? It had been previously installed several times before.”  And then you responded to him by saying:  “Windows Recovery Environment update. Hardly a required update.  Make an image backup using your favourite backup app instead.”  I didn’t understand exactly what you meant.  For example, why would KB5050411 be “hardly a required update” in view of the fact that Microsoft calls it a security update?

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Win7and10

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KB5050411 is the update to the Windows recovery environment. So few people use the recovery environment that I think you can safely ignore that update.

You are much better off making an image backup with a 3rd party backup app and creating a recovery USB for that.

cheers, Paul

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L95

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I’ve avoided the KB5050411 so far.  (Using MS Catalog rather than Windows Update automatic download, plus the pause settings)

Q: if you are relying on the Windows 7 Backup/Restore and have File History for data and Windows System Images, does it require having KB5050411? (Ya, I know 3rd party backups are better – no need for a reminder ;0!)

I was just going to do the usual manual download and install for only the .NET CU and Windows CUs for this month.

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L95

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HI, that was me!

 

Win7and10 said:  “after my computer restarted and settled in, KB5050411 was no longer in my history of installations. Why would it disappear? It had been previously installed several times before.” 

 

This WINRE update has been taxing to say the least. At first it did not want to install last year, then it did on retry. Then last month it did not install at all and just disappeared on retry. I’m not sure what it is doing when it does this behavior. Right now, it is not under installed updates. Seems like I have to go through this every single month. One thing I noticed, if it tries to install first, everything comes to a halt specifically the cumulative update. Last month (January) it went smoothly as the WINRE update waiting for everything else to install and then failed even after retrying. I plan to install the February updates this weekend.

Win 10 Home 22H2

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It is safe to ignore KB5050411. If your machine really wants it, it will appear later.

cheers, Paul

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L95

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Paul T wrote:

You are much better off making an image backup with a 3rd party backup app and creating a recovery USB for that.

Paul T:  Thanks for your response.  Why would I be better off using a third-party image backup rather than relying on  KB5050411?  And which third-party image backup do you yourself use?  Also,  how much time would it take a person who doesn’t have a lot of computer knowledge such as myself to learn how to use it,  and how much time would it take me to make a backup?  I will appreciate your response.

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L95 wrote:

how much time would it take a person who doesn’t have a lot of computer knowledge such as myself to learn how to use it

I’ve used image backups for many years. Your question has a lot of moving parts.

Search the Ask Woody forums for “image backups”.

This also will help:

I typed this question to https://www.perplexity.ai.

Try it out.

“What are image backups and what do I need to get started?”

 

 

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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L95

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Cijan wrote:

Q: if you are relying on the Windows 7 Backup/Restore and have File History for data and Windows System Images, does it require having KB5050411?

No, the backup app creates a recovery environment and bootable USB for you.

 

L95 wrote:

Why would I be better off using a third-party image backup rather than relying on  KB5050411?

The Windows recovery is not and backup, it’s a simplified interface you use when troubleshooting.

I use Macrium Reflect (rather technical) and Aomei Backupper (simple) to create image files on an external USB disk. Both have free versions.
I think you will master Aomei in about 15 minutes, but MR can take hours because it has so many options. And we are always here to help.  🙂

cheers, Paul

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L95, Cijan

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Paul T wrote:

The Windows recovery is not and backup, it’s a simplified interface you use when troubleshooting.

FYI, the Windows Recovery environment (WinRE) is used for this:

And KB5050411 was an update for the various components it uses.

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L95, Cijan

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Updated 3 Win10Pro & 1 Win11Pro without incidence.

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