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I am Windows 7 (x64) Group B, as well. I updated through December, but have only applied IE patches for January and February. Since I only use IE about 6 times per year, after reading the comments below about the latest IE kerfuffle, I don’t think I’m going to update IE anymore. I haven’t experienced any issues on either 7 or IE 11 so far, and my current thinking is to produce a first-rate system clone and leave well enough alone. I’m sorry to say that I don’t think MS knows what it is doing anymore with updates. When I start seeing suggestions to tweak the BIOS or change registry settings–on my own, and not through a well-thought-out update–in order to accommodate poorly conceived patches that address questionable issues, I lose all trust.

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Cybertooth

Just wanted to confirm what MrJimPhelps said. As Richard Dreyfuss said to Robert Shaw in the movie, Jaws, “I think you’re going to need a bigger boat.” I was so thrilled Monday morning at how much faster the site was loading, but then today it’s either been a case of not being able to get on at all or, once on, waiting for the articles to load. I will try to contribute a small donation, since this is an important website to me, but I’m not in a position to afford a subscription service. That’s why I stopped reading Windows Secrets years ago.

I’m delighted that Susan has joined AskWoody, but I’d just like to give a shout out to all the techs here who volunteer their time and effort to those of us who realized we can no longer depend on Microsoft (or these days, Intel, third-party software vendors, etc.) for help keeping our systems running properly.

Thanks. I’m having the same problem mentioned by GonetoPlaid below. Even at 6:40 a.m. the load is a little slow.

Not to rain on your (Chinese New Year) parade, but I’m still having occasional difficulties even getting the askwoody website to come up. Seems to be worse in the morning and better in the afternoons.  Can you advise a time of day when traffic is lower than other times? Thanks.

I have the touch pad disabled, because I hate touch pads. However, to keep the computer up-to-date, I went to the site with the patch downloads. Guess what? The file is corrupted!!! I can’t install the new driver. Does anyone field check these updates anymore?

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HiFlyer

Another reason to be Group B! I have had virtually no problems with my laptop due, really, to two things: Group B and disabling HP Support Assistant. (If you think MS is indifferent to its users, you should read the HP forums. Certain problems are known to be Support Assistant related and are never fixed by HP.) I also agree with Noel that it’s important to keep IE 11 up-to-date. I recently needed to obtain a copy of a document from Social Security that I could email elsewhere.  IE was the only browser that allowed me to save the document to my computer (with Firefox, you could print out the document but not save it).

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The Surfing Pensioner, JDeC, flackcatcher, Noel Carboni

HP laptop running Windows 7 Pro here. No problems with the telemetry program since I have HP Support Assistant disabled. Discovered some time ago that Support Assistant created more problems than it solved. Everything I’ve needed is handled by basic Windows systems. I also avoid driver updates. If it works, why tamper with it?

The date you mentioned is interesting to me because on my computer, beginning one day earlier than on yours, all of a sudden any number of MSE updates failed. That has never, ever happened before. To be honest, I never look at Update History unless I’m doing the monthly updates (I’m a Group B manual install user). All of a sudden, in addition to the one MSE update that is showing up again and again as having successfully installed, but continues to keep installing itself, I have updates that didn’t install. So much for all these tech companies that insist on more and more H-1B visas.

I, too, will be one of those FF users migrating to Palemoon. I will keep FF 55 as a backup browser, just as I still have Opera 12.16 as a backup browser. I don’t game, I don’t shop much online, and I don’t have any resource-hungry programs on my computers, so issues of security or RAM aren’t nearly so important to me in my browser selection as they might be for others. (Thanks to vastly improved firewalls and anti-malware programs, I haven’t seen a virus on my computer since the early days of XP.) What I care about is sensible set-up and presentation that allows me flexibility to easily access information on the computer. The older Opera was immediately intuitive, while, at the same time, offering clearly useful settings. Changes to YouTube and other media-intensive sites meant needing to have an Opera alternative. FF has always had excellent codecs, so when I learned about Classic Theme Restorer, All-in-One Sidepanel, uBlock Origin, and some other tweaks, FF became almost as user-friendly as Opera had been. I love being able to have an extension that easily allows me to turn off Java Script pop-ups and videos, and I simply won’t go back to an internet experience in which I have no input in how material is presented to me.

That being said, I see two issues influencing not just browser selection, but operating systems, search engines, and many other aspects of internet computing. Specifically:

1. The internet experience has become fractured by those using desktop/laptop computers and those using “smartphones” for their computing. Just as a copper land line provides superior communication to wireless, the desktop provides superior visibility, privacy, and program space to a wireless computer phone. It is also a lot less expensive to operate an ethernet than a wireless network. The two platforms require totally different approaches by developers, and, sadly, since wireless is much more profitable to telcos and the Silicon Valley tech set, applications for desktop users are not keeping pace with mobile development. If PC manufacturers were to partner with the software community, not only would they see improved sales, but we, the end-users, would see better products. I won’t hold my breath.
2. Computing, like so many other products and services, has been cra*ified by replacing the goal of customer satisfaction with the object of simply forcing users to accept the unpalatable in order for the suppliers to make more money. A commenter on a Palemoon forum put it rather succinctly: “Call us romantic, but some of us long for the continuation of the Personal Computer, in the spirit of the visions of Vannevar Bush, Doug Englebart, the Xerox PARC team, Steve Wozniak, Richard Sapper, and user-first design methodology as exemplified by the Windows 95 User Interface Design team. This is as opposed to the user-ignorant or even user-hostile software and hardware so common today.”

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Steve, Elly, Noel Carboni, wdburt1, flackcatcher, HiFlyer, SueW, Cybertooth

Apparently MS was aware of the problem and corrected it for the Update Catalog, so I had no problems installing. Thank you from a Group B user!

Thank you. The additional security issues for IE (especially IE 11), were not addressed in previous articles about the July patch, as far as I can tell. All information focused on the iFrame printing issue. On Qualys, I was able to find a list of security issues addressed by the July IE patch and, while Qualys didn’t identify which of the issues were considered Critical, the type of weaknesses listed were predicated on actions for which even a cautious IE user might find it easy to become a victim.

On other websites, it was mentioned that the original July IE patch caused an install loop for owners of machines with Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit. Apparently, MS fixed this problem by re-issuing the patch a couple of days later. Do you happen to know if the Group B July IE patch is the revised patch or the original patch? As an owner of a machine with 64-bit Pro, I’m not keen to run into an installation loop.

That’s my take, as well. June’s patch was to fix a security issue. July’s patch was to fix an esoteric printing issue. Why would you negate a security patch if you have no intention of ever printing documents with iFrames from IE? I see July’s IE patch as a sop to corporate users, with Microsoft’s assumption being that corporations have other methods that their IT professionals can employ to guard against elevated privilege incursions.

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JDeC

After support for XP ended, I left WU in a state of “Advise but let me decide whether to download.” Although not publicly admitted, MS has sent through some updates since then. I mentioned here the other day that I received notice of a security update for Office 2003 the same day that the announcement was made for out-of-cycle Windows patches, but I couldn’t use Windows Update to access the Windows patches, nor did I receive a notice that other updates were available. The recent patches (those I didn’t have already) all had to be installed manually. I keep the XP because it contains an expensive CAD program and associated files, but I don’t use the machine all that often.

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DeWayne12, woody

I couldn’t get the first two to install, apparently. They appeared to install with no problems, but when I went looking for them in Add or Remove Programs, they were nowhere to be found. Interestingly, if it weren’t for Ask Woody, I wouldn’t even have known about these additional patches. What I did receive today, unasked, was a security update for my Office 2003 which is on the same machine. This whole issue of remote access and control seems to be a major problem for MS.

I ran the MSRT about an hour ago. Selected a deep scan, which only took 35 minutes. The bottom line is why I remain in Group B. During the scan, the pop-up window said it found two infected files; however, the final report (a feature normally not available in the monthly MSRT), which listed all the names of malware being searched for in the scan, said no infections were found. I have never seen a malware scan that shows infections found during the scan but then says “no infections found” in the final report. Typically, at the end of a scan,  anti-malware programs issue a report on possible infections and then ask whether you want to quarantine or remove. Did MS actually find two infected files and remove them? If so, I was not advised. The experience struck me as less than professional, certainly out-of-pattern for professional malware removal programs, and even out-of-pattern for how MS describes the method in which MSRT operates when it finds an infection.