Newsletter Archives

• There’s a fix for the bluescreen on the second March cumulative update for Win10 1809 – KB 4490481

  Posted on April 8, 2019 at 08:16 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Remember the bluescreens many people reported after installing the second March cumulative update for Win10 1809, KB 4490481? For many people, installing the cumulative update results in a System Service Exception error when you restart. (To add to the confusion, the second cumulative update for March was released on April 2.)

  I’ve never seen an acknowledgment of the bug, even though I’ve seen lots and lots of reports. When Microsoft says it’s going to start documenting all of the significant bugs in cumulative updates, I’m still skeptical — and this is one of the prime examples.

  On Sunday morning, an enterprising (and bright!) fellow on the My Digital Life forum, max1, posted a fix. Ends up that the bluescreen is triggered if you have certain Media Center fonts on your Win10 1809 machine. (Media Center doesn’t ship with Win10. As for why anyone would want it… that’s a discussion for another time.)

  I have no idea how max1 figured it out, but reports from all over say it fixes the bluescreen. I first saw the report on Sunday evening, here on AskWoody, from an anonymous poster. Overnight, Martin Brinkmann posted confirmation on ghacks.

  There are four fonts you have to take off of your system. You can futz with the registry (Brinkmann has the instructions) or you can create a .reg file following the instructions from our anonymous poster:

  Copy the following into a text file, rename it with .reg extension and double click on it:

  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontLink\SystemLink]
  "MS PGothic MC"=-
  "Segoe Media Center"=-
  "Segoe Media Center Light"=-
  "Segoe Media Center Semibold"=-
  

  Works like a champ.

  Windows Patches/Security KB 4490481

• Reliable reports of bluescreen after installing Win10 1809’s second March cumulative update, KB 4490481

  Posted on April 4, 2019 at 06:46 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Martin Brinkmann advises that you better back up your system before installing KB 4490481, the Win10 1809 “optional non-security” second cumulative update for March (which, confusingly, was released on April 2).

  @AskWoody @etguenni @Deskmodder

  — ghacksnews (@ghacks) April 4, 2019

  On ghacks.net:

  Ran into a System Service Exception error on restart after installing the update on one machine. System Restore fixed the issue, Startup repair did not.

  doctorwizz on Tenforums:

  I was rebooting from Win10 to boot to Win8.1. The update was installing on the shutdown phase and it was taking longer to install this time. So I tried to boot to Win10 again. It was continuing to update and bam. BSOD System Service Exception.

  From secondsight, also on Tenforums:

  I like doctorwizz above also have BSOD on every machine I have after restarting to complete this update. They all run Win 10 Enterprise. I don’t have any special software running and I’ve never had such problems before. I got out of the fix by doing a system restore and I’m back at 17783.379 now. I tried an experiment or two. I tried the standalone windows catalog installer….same thing.

  I also found a Chinese language post that may (or may not) be related.

  Of course, I recommend that you NOT install this second monthly cumulative update. Just follow the instructions in my Computerworld article and you’ll be fine.

  Windows Patches/Security KB 4490481, System Service Exception