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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
So the other day the only place I could find solid actionable information about the risk of attacks from the IE zero day was on a Microsoft 365 ATP E5
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – okay Microsoft, how about you help?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Susan, we mere users have to accept the fact that Microsoft listens to no-one.
If not for you, Woody and the other MVPs, we would be in a constant state of bewilderment at Microsoft’s pathetic treatment of its users.
Thanks to you guys, I’m managing to avoid most of the disasters that MS regularly imposes on us. :-/
Anyone hopes MS will give attention to? Mrs Susan correctly describes “Quote start:
You have a responsibility to all of your customers, and not just those with premier support contracts. : End quote”.
Will Microsoft change without being sued for ‘many billions of billions of dollars’?
And to whom of all the critics is MS listening?
Anyone hopes MS will give attention to? Mrs Susan correctly describes “Quote start:
You have a responsibility to all of your customers, and not just those with premier support contracts. : End quote”.
Will Microsoft change without being sued for ‘many billions of billions of dollars’?
And to whom of all the critics is MS listening?
Fred,
In a word, NO ONE ! ! ! The only thing they listen to is THEIR bottom line.
Again, “Many thanks” to Woody and EVERYONE ELSE on the team at Ask Woody for all the help and insight as to what is going on and keeping us and our machines safe.
Dave
With Windows 7 EOL in less than 3 months
The Windows 10 mess – especially ver 1903 which everyone is being pushed to
When will the user public co-ordinate and bring a class action lawsuit?
No other company could produce, sell, and cause as many problems with a nationally utilized product not performing as intended and advertised without being held accountable!
Seriously – when?
Good post, Susan… & way to Stick It to M$! What Microsoft’s forgotten is that people talk… even us consumer peons. A looong time ago, M$ responded to not only business users, but consumers. Proof for Win7 users was the Service Pack 1. Proof for Win8 users was Win8.1 & its Update. Proof for Win10 users that M$ is listening & responding to complaints? Version 1909… maybe. We’ll see how that rolls out in November, whether most or all of the 1903 bugs are fixed, & how many new bugs 1909 will be infected with. Sadly, relying on testing in virtual machines, & telemetry from “Insiders” & suckers who haven’t turned it off yet, isn’t nearly as good as in-house testers providing results & communicating regularly with coders. Also sadly, M$ doesn’t care about that, or intensely listening to outside sources (AskWoody, ghacks.com, Gunter Born, & other independent sites).
Bought a refurbished Windows 10 64-bit, currently updated to 22H2. Have broke the AC adapter cord going to the 8.1 machine, but before that, coaxed it into charging. Need to buy new adapter if wish to continue using it.
Wild Bill Rides Again...
Hear hear, Susan. I have many complaints, that I will not repeat here, about how hard it is for an individual user to patch safely. The bland mandate of “implement automatic updates and suffer whatever bugs we may impose on you” is simply not acceptable.
Chris
Win 10 Pro x64 Group A
When Windows 98 EOL approached I couldn’t afford a new computer so I bought a windows-like Linux distro called Xandros and dual booted. Linux for online activities and Windows for games and some programs I needed for my volunteer work.
When I finally got a new computer I decided to stick to Windows XP and now use Windows 7. I wondered why I never went back to Linux. Well, the distro I used was discontinued and Windows did what I needed.
I have been away from Linux for 10 years and have started thinking about it again. I am not a fanboy of any OS but I am not confident about having to switch to Windows 10 in a few months.
-firemind
When will the user public co-ordinate and bring a class action lawsuit?
Think of the numbers here. How many users are actually having the problems being discussed here on AskWoody? How many users are not noticing any problems at all? Which group is a subset of the other, and by what percentage? The Windows 10 user base is huge.
I’m one of the MVP’s here, I’m running older hardware, I have 5 installations of Windows 10 Pro, a networked HP All-in-One, and I’m a Seeker (cannon fodder). I click Check for updates almost every day, yet I haven’t had any of the problems that have been encountered by others here.
This morning beginning at 1:00 AM, Task Scheduler had Image For Windows create drive images of my three main partitions/logical drives. At the moment, I’m using a Robocopy batch file to copy those images to a 3TB HDD in the drive dock in my NAS. All my data is in triplicate on different machines/drives, plus OneDrive in the cloud. I can afford to be fearless.
I have a different question. Does anyone here think that Microsoft is putting out patches on Patch Tuesday for PC’s that are only partially up-to-date with Windows patches, or for PC’s that are fully updated with all pertinent patches? My guess is that Windows updates are written for fully updated Windows installations.
What I do know is that I have 5 fully updated Windows 10 Pro installations, I have no issues with any of them, and I have had no issues with them.
bbearren asks some intriguing questions. How many users are actually having any of the problems being discussed on AskWoody and how many are not? I am among those who have not been having any of these problems. But for me, the real question is how many problems have I avoided by paying attention to the advice being given on AskWoody? I don’t know and never will, but I feel much better spending some time here to keep up with what is going on and maintaining my system in the most prudent way I can.
I also don’t see that what I am doing is so much in accordance with Microsoft’s notion of “social responsibility” as it is in protecting myself from their irresponsibility towards their users.
There are two points I want to emphasize about this post. Drive imaging is absolutely essential for me, and I advise it for everyone. For the past couple of decades I have been delving into the nether reaches of each version of Windows I have used (I never upgraded to Vista), dividing it into its main component system folders to enhance performance, (reading a bunch of related files from three separate drives is much faster than reading those same files from a single drive), reliability, and to facilitate rapid image creation.
Over that same time period, I have had multiple hardware failures. I even had a house fire in 2011, but my image files were safe. I can say without hesitation that in that long time period, I have had far more hardware failures than Windows failures (other than the myriad that I have caused myself with my slicing, dicing and splicing).
I have gone through multiple upgrades of both hardware and Windows versions, always keeping recent drive images at the ready in the event of mishap. I have been using imaging software from TeraByte throughout, with which I’m comfortably familiar, and in which I have absolute trust.
I have no reason to not install whatever update Windows has to offer for my systems, because should something go awry (which has not yet happened) I have quick, reliable and trustworthy recovery at the ready.
The only issue I have had with upgrades were a couple that didn’t like StartIsBack++, said it was incompatible and got rid of it. All I had to do was re-install it, and it worked great. The upgrade to 1903 didn’t even kick it out, and I didn’t have to re-install it. It still works great; makes Windows 10 desktop and start menu look and work like Windows 7 desktop and start menu.
Of course the Patch Watch and MS-DEFCON are assets to SOHO IT folks who are running business/collaborative/proprietary software on lots of different machines. I’m not in that category. I’m just a user with a home network and a few machines who relies on drive images to bail me out of any given pitfall.
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