Patch Alert: February 2018

This month’s pile of problems pales in comparison to last month’s mayhem, but we’re still facing a handful of significant patching difficulties.

My advice: Wait and watch for a change in the MS-DEFCON level.

Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Advertising sites blocked on AskWoody

I take a vorpal blade to companies that push bad ads onto this site. At the moment I’m blocking:

digital-racks.com
driverwhiz.com
easyconverter.co
infragistcis.com
primeosr.com
remooptimizer.com
winzipdriverupdater.com

In addition to many categories of ads that just don’t belong here. That’s why you don’t see the lucrative “This vegetable will swell your pancreas” and “You’ll be amazed at what Miss USA looks like now!” garbage on this site.

It’s likely also why the site isn’t generating a whole lot of revenue. Oh well.

If you find an offensive ad, let me know the URL that it points to. I’ll cut it off, snicker-snack.

Weird hibernation state on reboot attributed to Win7 patches

We have two reports here on AskWoody of Win7 hibernation (?) problems after installing recent Win7 Monthly Rollups.

An anonymous poster:

I installed KB 4074598 on my Windows 7 Desktop PC (I use AMD stuff etc) and it kept putting my PC into a weird hibernation state when trying to restart.. every single time. It wouldn’t show input from the monitors, mouse/keyboard, but the tower would still be running. To get out of this state I had to turn off the PC directly from the button on the tower itself, then turn it back on. It didn’t even do that “windows shut down unexpectedly” thing when you force turn off the PC.

And a summary of reports on other forums, compliments of @amraybit.

Looks like the problems started with the January Monthly Rollup, KB 4056894, and continue with this month’s Monthly Rollup KB 4074598. It seems to impact both Intel and AMD chips.

Ben1907 on the Microsoft Answers forum has had some success, without uninstalling the patch:

I checked my C-State settings on my ASUS P8P67-M motherboard and they were set to the default settings in the ASUS manual.

• C1E [enabled]
• C3 Report [disabled]
• C6 Report [enabled]

Playing around by setting different combinations, I found the C1E enabled/disabled did not matter, so left it enabled. However, by setting C6 Report to DISABLED, I have now been able to perform a normal restart/reboot from Windows 7. Tried at least half dozen times and all good so far.

Thanks for investigating this and putting me on the right path to correct this issue. Microsoft has caused me so many lost hours of troubleshooting problems they inject with updates you wonder if they have any quality control.

Indeed.

Patch Lady Posts – Intuit acknowledges known issue with KB4074805

Susan here:  I saw that Woody had previously mentioned an optional .NET update impacting Quicken and now Intuit has acknowledged the issue:

“We have identified a recent Microsoft patch preventing QuickBooks Desktop products from opening on Windows 7, Windows 8.1,  and Server 2008 r2 computers. The patch is no longer available via Windows update.

Patch Lady Posts – KB4074588 known issues

Just this afternoon KB4074588 for Windows 10 1709 has been updated to reflect two known issues that *may* occur to some – but not to everyone – after the install of the February updates.  The root cause is the same — a key driver gets uninstalled by the install of the updates and not put back down again.

Update edit:  Please note this ONLY impacts the Fall creators edition 1709 release. To determine what version you have click on start, then on the gear, then on system, then on about, scroll down and see what version you are on.

If you are one of the unlucky ones that was damaged or impacted by this and you’ve somehow managed to get your system working again, I would say turn off the windows update service and hang tight.  Microsoft is working on a permanent fix.

For those with Windows 10 pro:  To disable the Windows update service, click on start, then on the gear setting,  click on update and security, click on advanced, click on the button to pause updates:

For those with Windows 10 home, in the Cortana search box type in control panel, in the upper right click on view by small icons (that’s my personal preference), then click on administrative tools, scroll down to services, scroll down and find the Windows Update service. Double click, change the start up type to disabled and stop the service.

Now put a sticky note on your computer indicating that you need to come back to Askwoody.com and watch when Patch Lady Susan gives you the all clear to turn this service back on after the March updates come out. It very very very much pains me to give you instructions to do this, but since I can’t give any sort of assurance that a 1709 update might pop this on you, I’m erring on the side of extreme caution.  At the core of information security is information assurance, the act of maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of systems, and this is the best way I know how to assure you that your system will remain available to you.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4074588/windows-10-update-kb4074588

Patch Lady Posts – Feb 22 2018 releases

More info in Computerworld Woody on Windows.

Woody already posted about these updates here, but I’ll be tracking any side effects in this post.  If there are any major issues I’m sure either I or Woody will give an update!

Once more, unto the breach!

The devs tell me the AskWoody site should be working much better now. Heaven knows we’ve had a bumpy ride the past couple of days. The past couple of months, come to think of it.

Demand has been growing at quite a rate. I don’t even know how fast it’s growing because we keep blowing through servers, but we’re certainly up significantly from last month — and Susan’s appearance is sure to nudge things higher.

At the risk of proffering a poor analogy, the “Ludicrous speed” upgrade we paid for was like buying a Rolls Royce – the best (and most expensive!) package on offer. What we really needed was a Tesla. Now we’re in the Tesla hosting package.

Just a reminder… the only way this works is if you either donate — see the wall of options in the upper right — and/or turn off your ad blocker. We don’t cotten to pushy ads.

Patch Lady: Inaccessible Boot Device Error

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4075150/how-to-recover-devices-from-an-unbootable-state-after-installing-the-j

Patch Lady Susan here on an issue I’ve been tracking since the January updates came out.  I have been concerned seeing consumers, consultants and folks in Enterprises impacted by an issue whereby after the January Spectre/Meltdown updates, the systems will reboot and the error message “Inaccessible Boot Device” is received.  At that point in time, you have a nice door stop until you can get the computer working again.  The KB above finally gives official guidance and acknowledges the issue. Based on a forum thread I’ve been following, it appears that the acpi.sys driver somehow gets mangled during either the install of updates or rebooting process.

As I live in California where we are urged to have an Earthquake readiness kit at all times, I’ll urge you to have a “Computer incident meltdown” kit at all times.

Step one: Make a bootable flash drive of Windows 10 from the Windows media installation site.  Should you need to boot “under” the operating system to get to a command prompt, this media will do the trick.

Step two: Have a backup of your programs, your key install codes, or anything else you’d hate to lose.  For standalone pcs, a nice external usb hard drive.  Your Windows 10 operating system and drivers for your pc will more than likely reinstall from even a base operating system reinstall, what you need to keep is installer downloads, product keys, photos, documents and anything else you’d cry or get really mad at someone at Microsoft if your system had to be totally rebuilt.  Of course you can also use a third party backup tool to completely backup your Windows 10, but bottom line, think of the items and software on your computer that would be hard to replace.