Microsoft’s changing the way it documents security patches

Security Bulletins are getting the boot, to align with the new groups-of-patches-only distribution.

I think the new approach delivers a lot more useful information with a lot less useless verbiage.

What do you think?

InfoWorld Woody on Windows

Surface Pro 3 battery problems continue

If you have a Surface Pro 3, and you’re still having battery problems – in spite of the November 7 firmware/driver update – you aren’t alone.

On the Microsoft Answers forum thread devoted to the topic, Barb Bowman has the latest:

I’ve been trying to get clarifications on almost a daily basis since this all started… In order to install [the Nov. 7 driver update] successfully, the OS must *think* that the battery is at 40% charge or greater. I don’t know any way to trick the OS into doing this.

If you have a Surface pro 3 and you haven’t pulled a Belichick, you should check what your computer says about your battery. From my Sept. 20 InfoWorld article on the topic:

Make sure your SP3 is fully charged, unplug it from the wall, right-click Start (or hit Ctrl-X), and choose Command Prompt (Admin). In the resulting box type: powercfg /batteryreport and press Enter (note the space before the / and no space in batteryreport). That generates a file, typically c:\Windows\System32\battery-report.html.

Open the file. Near the top of the report you’ll see the battery manufacturer name (likely SIMPLO or LGC-LGC) followed by a series of numbers. Design Capacity will tell you what the battery should be pushing. For LGC batteries, that’s going to be 42,157 mWh. Look at the Full Charge Capacity, which may or may not match the Design Capacity, thus showing one level of degradation of your battery reserves. Then look at the list of Recent usage power states, where you may find that your battery’s been unable to get up to a full charge.

Barb doesn’t have good news, for those of you who are still having battery problems:

The only other option right now is to contact support, pay the $29 to talk to someone and hope you get someone that can really trouble shoot. My opinion is that the support agents will just send you to the $450 out of warranty exchange and there’s no guarantee that you will receive a device that won’t develop issues after the short warranty on it expires (or has other problems).

If you have a Surface Pro 3 – or know someone who does – you should take the time to check.

Microsoft says it’ll refund Surface Pro 3 bad battery replacements

Microsoft released a Surface Pro 3 firmware/driver update on November 7. Apparently the patch is specifically directed at the LGC battery problem I talked about on September 20.

MVP and Surface advocate Barb Bowman has a detailed explanation on the Microsoft Answers forum.

There are problems with the patch – also documented in the same thread on the Answers forum.

Microsoft has posted a lengthy description of the problem and its solution, which includes this important announcement of a refund for those who spent hard cash to fix a defective Microsoft battery:

AtomBombing

Tara Seals at InfoSecurity Magazine has a scary post, which relies on research published last week from EnSilo.

It  appears that Microsoft can’t fix the AtomBombing exposure as it relies on built-in Windows functions.

Solutions? I don’t see any. Is it just an exposure that only applies when you’ve been hacked already? Could be. Further discussion with Richi Jennings at Petri.com.

Using GPedit on Win10 Home doesn’t block updates

Just got a definitive answer from JC:

The TweakHound Win10 patching block only works with the Pro version  in conjunction with gpedit.msc.

I have Win10 Home. I downloaded and installed gpedit into my system, then set the windows update\”Configure Automatic Updates” to: “Notify for download and notify for install”

It didn’t work. Last night, the Win10 Home patch KB 3200970 installed itself automatically.  Microsoft bypassed my tweak and did the update last night when I rebooted. It took nearly 40 minutes to do the update..

As I see it, I have two choices:

Upgrade to the Pro version

Or

Turn Off windows updates manually.

It looks like metered connection is still the best way to block automatic updates on Win10 Home machines.

New Win10 beta build 14965 just released

If you’re in the Insider Fast ring, you can install it now.

The list of new features isn’t very interesting, unless you like to have Sticky Notes “insights” (handwriting recognition and Cortana interaction) turned on inside Sticky Notes. But it looks like there are lots of bug fixes.

AskWoody to add blog-like appendage

My Web folks are working on a melding of the AskWoody site, in its present form, with a Bulletin Board package called bbPress and a companion pack called bbPress Moderation.

In broad stripes, the links to comments in my posts here will go away, replaced by links into the AskWoody forum. You’ll be able to post replies, and there will be the ability to post anonymous (moderated) entries in the forum. Several people will be able to start their own conversations/threads. Navigating should be much easier. I’ll continue to exercise an iron fist in nixing spam and trolls, limiting personal attacks, and I’ll unashamedly Bowdlerize. I never forget that some day my six-year-old will read this stuff.

We’re generating hundreds of comments a day, and the current site makes it very difficult to find anything. That should improve. I hope.

I have no idea how this will shake out, and no preconceived notions about how to hook it up.

(By the way, those of you who asked… did you notice that the main font on the site is now much darker?)

Suggestions?

A note about politics on AskWoody

Those of you who have posted political statements:

I agree with many of you, disagree with some of you, but I won’t put political statements on this site.

Sorry.

It’s been a long night. I’m headed back to bed.

What you need to know about today’s 14 security bulletins

Lesson #1: WAIT!

As long as you don’t use IE or Edge, you’re fine. Wait to see if there are any problems with this month’s patches before you even think about installing them.

InfoWorld Woody on Windows.

UPDATE: If you have trouble installing any of the Win10 patches, get over to Reddit and ask johnwinkmsft or jenmsft.

A new way of displaying monthly security patches

I’m not sure exactly how this will roll out, but we’ve been warned.

The Microsoft Security Response Center has just announced that, effective in January, there won’t be any more security bulletins. In their stead, we get a spreadsheet.

Check out this month’s version. 55 KB articles for November 8. No mention of Security Bulletins.

Security update information will be published as bulletins and on the Security Updates Guide until January 2017. After the January 2017 Update Tuesday release, we will only publish update information to the Security Updates Guide.

New Adobe Flash Player updates

From EP:

New Adobe Flash Player security updates have been posted in Adobe security bulletin APSB16-37:

https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb16-37.html

Adobe is only offering new Flash Player v23 security updates and no longer offers any more Flash Player v18 “extended support release” updates.

Speed up Vista scans

Good one just came in from EP:

New win32k.sys security updates are available for Windows Vista from MS security bulletin MS16-135:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/MS16-135

Vista users should install KB3198234 to speed up WU scans from November 8 to December 12.

Someone in the Neowin.net forum reported it took about 67 hours for Windows Update to show a list of available updates for Windows Vista – this was thru a fresh install of Vista & not having the latest Vista security updates (and the person was using a dual-core computer):

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1270562-windows-vista-sp2-fresh-install-windows-update-doesnt-work/