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I don’t doubt your findings about account types, but I also use a local account, and don’t have the problem either. I’m on the latest build, 14393.576, but have never had the problem described when on earlier versions.

What type of local accounts are affected, i.e. Administrator or Standard? If Standard, have you tried changing one to Administrator and see what happens?

We will miss your always insightful advice, and so the occasional “drop in” would be good. If you manage to have some spare time on your hands, especially in winter when not much food grows, why not take a trip to Australia? Your winter is our summer, and we speak the same language (sort of). Anyway, I can only echo others in wishing you all the best for the future.

One thing you might check, especially on your upstairs machine, is whether your network settings are at optimal values. Download TCP Optimizer from speedguide.net and give it a go. In the General Settings tab, move the slider to somewhere in your reported range, say 14 Mbps and then select Optimal settings. Do the same on the Advanced Settings tab. Pay particular attention to the size of the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit), because if this is set too low there will be multiple reads, and if too high it will cause fragmentation of incoming data (which then has to be de=fragmented). Check this via the MTU/Latency tab, and set the MTU in General Settings to the recommended value. Then Apply Changes, and exit. Because some registry values may have been changed, a restart is then recommended.

This can be an iterative process; you may need to try it with different speed settings until you get the right balance.

Have installed 3206632, and all seems OK. I installed the other updates first, while having 3206632 hidden, then restarted and checked. Then I unhid 3206632 and installed it with no problems. It must have been a big update; the download took quite a while, as did the install. Now also seeing version 1607, build 14393.576. Don’t know what happened to 3201845; did anyone who installed it also get 3206632?

A question about the big download of 3206632: does a “cumulative update” include fixes which have already been downloaded and installed, or is it all new?

When I look at available updates today (I use the “show or hide” utility), I see the usual list of Patch Tuesday stuff, but KB3201845 is not listed. The “Cumulative Update for Windows 10 version 1607 for x64 based Systems” is now KB3206632. It looks like MS has pulled 3201845 and replaced it with 3206632, so hopefully any bugs in 3201845 have been fixed? Or not?? Anyway, 3201845 seems to have gone away, so I’m glad I didn’t install it. I will install the other updates first, then 3206632 by itself, and will post the result. I have an image backup which I can restore if necessary.

Bundabura, I got installed and nopro. 32-bit machine !

Snow here, I guess that you do not get any. Jean.

Hi Jean, no we don’t get snow here, not even on the coldest days in winter – not high enough, not south enough, although it does snow a few times each year on the nearby hills. Just coming into summer now, and bracing for a bad bushfire season, with lots of undergrowth drying off, following a mild and wet spring. I was affected by the fires in February 2009, don’t want to go through that again.

Thanks everyone, it seems that this update is actually OK, so I’m puzzled by some of the reports I have seen. Problems mentioned include breaking the internet connection (DHCP issues); breaking Google products such as Chrome; high CPU usage in DCOM; Microsoft Edge no longer working properly; Bluetooth going AWOL; and failure to install properly, sending the PC into an endless restart loop.

These problems may be isolated, exaggerated or non-existent, but I think I will wait for the next “Patch Watch” report to see if Susan Bradley has anything on it.

I don’t have the problem either. You may have tried this already, but here’s what I do: Control Panel > Default Programs > Associate a file type or protocol with a program. In there you will see a list of file types (extension names) on the left, then the default description of that file type, and in the third column, the current program default for opening that file type. Scroll down the list of file types to the one you are interested in, then highlight it and click on “Change program”. It will show a list of programs which could open that file type; find the one you want and click OK. In my case at least, that selection sticks. I think setting it this way takes priority over the “settings” route, which I have never used, and on now going in there, I see that some defaults which I have set through the control panel actually show up as empty – “Choose a default”.

As noted above, the problem occurs when the receiving computer cannot understand the format. I became quite involved with this a while back; see “Outlook and winmail.dat problems”, at present on page 4 of this forum. Here’s the link to it: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//173887-Outlook-and-winmail-dat-problems

An effective way to turn off Windows Update is simply to disable the service. The display name is “Windows Update”, and the actual service name is wuauserv. You can leave it disabled most of the time, and only re-enable it when you want to receive updates, for example on or soon after Patch Tuesday. So long as the service is disabled, you will not get any updates. You can issue these commands from an admin level command prompt:

To stop and disable: net stop wuauserv
sc config wuauserv start= disabled

To enable and start: sc config wuauserv start= auto
net start wuauserv

The same commands can also be used in a batch file. Note that in the sc config commands, there is no space before the =, but there is a space after. The syntax is “start= auto” .

You can also control updates via the “show or hide” tool – see here for more information: https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/kb/3183922. Running this will show you what updates, if any, are currently available, but will not download them, with the option to hide any that you don’t want when Windows Update runs. Of course, the WU service must be enabled when you run it.

I have Outlook 2016, and have made my own backup utility as a batch file, just using COPY. I have it running as a scheduled task in the background,so it doesn’t disturb my work when it runs, but you could just run it on demand if you like, for example after exiting Outlook. The trick is to not allow the COPY to run if Outlook is running, because the .pst files cannot be accessed and it will result in empty files being sent to the backup location, but the batch file takes care of that. Here’s the relevant part of the batch file – which you can customize to your own requirements. The tasklist command checks to see if a task called OUTLOOK.EXE is running, then the list command examines the output from tasklist. If it returns 0 then it means Outlook is running, so don’t do the copy.

::
:: Outlook PST files backup – check if Outlook is running.
::
tasklist /FI “imagename eq OUTLOOK.EXE” | find /I /N “OUTLOOK.EXE”
if “%ERRORLEVEL%”==”0” goto nocopy
::
:: Outlook not running, so copy the PST files.
::
cd “E:Outlook PST Files” (Or whatever your default location is for the .pst files)
copy outlook.pst “S:Outlook Backup” (Or where you want to put the backups)
copy archive.pst “S:Outlook Backup”
::
:nocopy
::

To run a scheduled task in the background, the trick is to run it under a different user who is not logged on. Create a user just for this purpose (I call mine SUBTASK), then create the scheduled task to be run by that user, but with the option to run it even if the user is not logged on. Because the user is not logged on, nothing happens on the screen when the task runs. If you want to run it as a scheduled task, you can set it to run automatically every x minutes, or once a day, or al logon time, whatever.

This is not answering your question, but if you can, I would suggest getting a USB keyboard. One advantage of such (apart from never needing batteries) is that being physically connected, the keyboard lights for Caps Lock, Num Lock etc. will activate. If you don’t have a spare USB port, a USB keyboard can usually be connected via a multi-port hub. I have a Logitech USB keyboard attached to a hub, and my Logitech cordless mouse connects to another port on the same hub, both devices work perfectly. The Logitech keyboard is a model K310, which claims to be waterproof and washable, so I doubt if there is much chance of the letters wearing off. I have had it for about a year, used extensively, and the letters are still pristine. The occasional wipe with a damp cloth, to remove fingermarks and grime, does not affect the letter quality. Black letters on white keys, by the way. Key characters are laser printed and UV coated to ensure the letters don’t fade in the wash.

Thanks to all those who replied.

I’ve always wondered how the phone company can transmit a fast internet signal over a simple two-wire phone line!

Good question. I have a DSL connection over the phone line, and the exchange is about two miles from the house, yet I get a reasonable signal. I once had a situation where the actual phone service died, no dial tone and could not make or receive any calls, but I still had a normal internet connection. When the technician came to fix the phone service, I asked him how come I could still connect to the internet, and he didn’t really know. He said something about voice and data traffic operating on different frequencies, but it was rather vague.

Yes, it wasn’t any particular document. I could open a known good .docx just using Word, and it would open normally. When I sent that same document to myself as an attachment, and tried to open it from Outlook, it would not open. That made me think there must be something in the interaction between Word and Outlook, so I went looking for a possible cause and eventually found one. The problem at first looked like an Outlook one, which is why I posted this in the Outlook forum, but probably it’s really an issue with Word.

I would be curious to know if anyone else has the same problem if they turn on that “Protected View” option in Word? It’s in File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Protected View > Enable Protected View for Outlook attachments.