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BEST UTILITIES

By Deanna McElveen

I’ve been in the computer-repair business for 20 years. I used to carry around a folder of floppy disks containing all my diagnostics and repair utilities — then it became a collection of CDs and later DVDs.

Now I carry everything I need on a few flash drives hanging on lanyards. Those utilities are invaluable, but they also have an annoying side: keeping them all up to date and quickly finding the particular app I need on one of the drives.

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.39.0 (2019-10-28).

Patch Lady Podcast – End of October wrap up

October’s Patch Lady Podcast

I’ve given the all-clear for businesses to install the October “B week” patches. Woody hasn’t caught up yet – he’s still recommending that individuals hold off on installing the latest patches. While installing the “B Week” patches, one of the machines I administer knocked out Edge. Fun ‘n games.

Download the podcast here

Links for topics mentioned in the Podcast:

Edge won’t open

Reinstall Edge

Microsoft Ignite

Group policy to defer feature updates

Watch out for non-MS Surface Pro 7 (and Surface Laptop 3?) drivers

.@surface Pro 7 (&maybe Intel Surface Laptop 3) is using customized Intel WiFi drivers. Installing the generic Intel wifi driver is not blocked, but it does not fix wifi issues AND once installed, may cause other issues including inability to go back to Surface customized driver.

— Barb Bowman (@barbbowman) October 27, 2019

Microsoft says they made a mistake with that Autopilot sorta-security patch rollout

Thanks, Julia.

PaulSey…
Microsoft Employee | Forum Owner
Replied on October 25, 2019

A Windows Autopilot update, which was targeted as part of the out of box experience for new devices, was incorrectly offered to customers running Windows Home edition during regular scheduled Windows update scan. Once we became aware of the issue, we stopped distribution of the update. No action is required on your part.

Original Computerworld article here.

Microsoft fixes some NEC compatibility problems, but keeps the 1903 upgrade block in place

NEC was a major PC manufacturer, back in the time of pterodactyls. These days, not so much. But that doesn’t let them off the hook for compatibility problems.

Microsoft just announced that it’s worked with NEC to fix a compatibility problem that kept NEC computers from working with Win10 version 1903. Quoth the Release Information Status page:

Safeguard on certain devices with some Intel and Broadcom Wi-Fi adapters

Microsoft and NEC have found incompatibility issues with Intel Centrino 6205/6235 and Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi cards when running Windows 10, version 1903 on specific models of NEC devices. If these devices are updated to Windows 10, version 1903, they will no longer be able to use any Wi-Fi connections. The Wi-Fi driver may have a yellow exclamation point in device manager. The task tray icon for networking may show the icon for no internet and Network & Internet settings may not show any Wi-Fi networks.

Because of that problem, Microsoft has been blocking Win10 1903 upgrades on NEC machines with the afflicted hardware.

Now comes word that MS has fixed the problem. It’s resolved in this month’s second, optional, non-security cumulative update for 1903, KB 4522355 (although the fix isn’t mentioned in the KB article).

Microsoft’s keeping the upgrade block in place until “mid-November,” no doubt waiting for next month’s first cumulative update, which should include the fix.

A short note on Microsoft earnings

I don’t dig into Microsoft earnings statements anymore. Paul Thurrott sums up the reason nicely:

Microsoft is eager for investors to believe that it’s the equal of Amazon AWS in the cloud, so it engages in a little bit of semantic trickery by inventing a non-business called Commercial Cloud that includes a revolving cherry-picked selection of products and services that put its own efforts in a good light.

That’s precisely what’s happened. You can no more compare “cloud revenue” (whatever that means) from year-to-year or quarter-to-quarter than you can compare the number of bugs on your windshield. Amy Hood once again demonstrates her considerable, enviable magic.

Suffice it to say that Microsoft made a heap of money, that Office subscriptions are raking it in, that Azure is receiving the lion’s share of the publicity, AI (whatever that means) is everybody’s dahlin’, and that Windows is still a small lump of coal in an undifferentiated, increasingly forgotten corner.

Microsoft reps continue to recommend Surface Pro 6 owners install a beta version of Windows

I started to write about this a week ago, but decided to let it ride. Now, it’s back again.

The advice being doled out for Surface Pro 6 owners on the Microsoft Answers forum is bad advice. In a nutshell, MS moderators continue to tell people experiencing the 400 MHz throttling bug or the Marvel driver bug that they should move to the Insider Program, join the Release Preview Ring, and install the latest beta test version of Win10 version 1909.

Wrong.

There’s a reason why it’s called a “beta,” folks.

Microsoft tells @Surface customers to join Release Preview Insiders to get SP6 .4GHz throttling fix and fixed Marvell WiFi driver.  Asserts it will keep them on current Windows release (NO, 1909 is NOT released & is in Release Preview). Standalone Surface Insiders Ring is needed pic.twitter.com/rQI7KCIQ5v

— Barb Bowman (@barbbowman) October 25, 2019

Barb’s two screenshots come from this moderator reply about the .4 GHz throttling problem and this moderator reply about the buggy Marvell driver.

You may not realize it, but Surface owners who put their machines in the Insider program regularly receive firmware and driver updates that aren’t released to the public. Those firmware and driver updates can’t be uninstalled. Something else they didn’t tell you in Insider school, eh?

As Barb says, this is no way to treat a paying customer! Telling people to install a version of Windows that’s still in testing, just to fix a Microsoft-created bug, is simply lousy advice:

Business customers and careful consumers should NOT have to update their OS and join Windows Insiders. They need a Surface Insiders group separate from the OS where folks can test drivers or better yet, make them available as separate downloads

16 million Insider guinea pigs, ripe for the plucking. If you don’t mind a mixed metaphor. Or a plucked pig.

UPDATE from Bowman:

If MS REALLY thinks that they are testing against production builds in release preview, that they are wrong and this means no one is widely testing against RELEASED builds. Microsoft needs a stand alone Insiders Ring for Surface testing so that IT folks can test on dedicated machines, etc. What is especially egregious is that the Marvel bug seems to impact Enterprise mesh networks/roaming more than consumer and you know that businesses don’t want to push to 1909 or ANY new release.

Patch Lady – so what’s KB4523786

On a standalone PC that’s never seen Windows autopilot I am getting KB4523786 pushed out if I click on check for updates.   And I have never installed autopilot here. (proving once again NEVER ever click on check for updates).  Thank You Michael M for reporting this… as I’m pretty sure this is a detection error.  Hang loose and don’t install it.

More details in Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Microsoft posts its second October cumulative update for Win10 version 1903

Microsoft just released its second October cumulative update for Win10 version 1903. It’s KB 4522355, “optional, non-security” patch. You only get it if you click on Check for Updates.

At this point, I haven’t heard of any problems.

But the day is yet young.

Worth noting: Microsoft released three different versions of KB 4522355 to Insider testers in the Release Preview ring. This is the third one, which raises the build number to 18362.449.

Also worth noting: Those of you still on the Release Preview ring, who have installed Win10 version 1909, will see the same patch. Your build number will go to 18363.449. That’s the build number I see on my 1909 test machine at this moment.

@EP adds: also Intel DCH Graphics driver version 26.20.100.7323 is available from Intel’s web site (adds 1909 support; may also work with older Win10 versions from 1709 to 1903) 

Patch Lady – C week 1903 patch is finally out

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4522355

…so let’s see why we were waiting for you…

Improves an access control list (ACL) check for Known Folders to prevent a black screen that appears the first time a user signs in after installing a feature or quality update

Addresses an issue that causes the Start menu, the Cortana Search bar, Tray icons, or Microsoft Edge to stop responding in certain scenarios after installing a monthly update.

…among other things.  Note I don’t recommend you install this, just that I see it as an indicator that we should be NOW evaluating the October 8th updates.  I’ll be doing my “business” recap this weekend the rest wait for the all clear from Woody.

Symantec Endpoint Protection dies again

What’s with these folks at Symantec?

Catalin Cimpanu reports in ZDNet:

For the fourth time in three months, a Symantec security product is crashing user apps, and this time it’s the latest Chrome release, v78, which rolled out earlier this week, on Tuesday, October 22… According to the antivirus maker, the issues are only affecting SEP 14 users on Windows 10 RS1 [I think he's referring to Redstone 1, which probably means any recent version of Win10 -WL], Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2016 operating systems. Symantec users on other OS versions can fix this by updating to the latest SEP 14.2 release…

The issue of SEP crashing Chrome 78 browsers should have not surprised Symantec staff, who received early warnings about this more than three months ago, according to a bug report filed in early August while Chrome 78 was still in testing in the Canary channel.

Remember how Symantec didn’t figure out how to work with the revised SHA-2 update signing requirement for Windows 7?

https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1187390974827417601

Whittaker: Speak truth to power

I just finished reading James Whittaker’s post on Medium called Speaking Truth to Power: Reflections on My Career at Microsoft.

Wow. If you want to see What’s Really Wrong with Windows (one of my favorite topics), you really need to read this.

If Windows was the only refuge for recycled failures — the wannabe leaders who energetically and emphatically backed Gates’ and Ballmer’s strategy that whiffed on the web, cloud and mobile — Microsoft might be ok. But the residue of the past is thick in enough places that it is suffocating the culture of tomorrow.

Is there hope? For Microsoft, yes, absolutely. For Windows… I’m not so sure.