Patch Tuesday February 2012: 9 Updates Correcting 21 Issues

Crashed all 3 of my computers BSOD….All three had to be Restored using System restore. [PT: October 2011]

@alfo68: Wow! Were they similar computers, hardware-wise I mean? [PT: October 2011]

My computer was frozen after that update.
HDD LED just turned on and never turned off.
I waited for ages before any program can start… [PT: October 2011]

@Alex, @Kandis, and @Jess: What operating systems are you using? Windows 7? Vista? XP? I’m not seeing a lot of negative response to these updates on other blogs or forums so maybe I’m just catching all the negative comments about this, but if there is something to it, finding out what’s similar among you will help. [PT: October 2011]

Update crashed my pc twice. First time was able to restore using restore point. Thankfully I backed up computer, created a system repair disc before i restarted computer. Update indicated 1 of 9. Restarted computer and it crashed again. [PT: October 2011]

@Kandis: Yea, I’d wait until (if) there’s any news about some unintended side effects, and a fix, before you apply these. [PT: October 2011]

My laptop also got the BSOD after installing these updates. When it restarted after installing it got the Blue Screen. Thankfully, it works perfectly again after doing a system restore to before I installed it. WILL NOT BE INSTALLING THESE UNTIL MICROSOFT FIXES IT. [PT: October 2011]

@Jess: What kind of computer do you have and what version of Windows? [PT: October 2011]

My computer is an HP Pavillion running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. [PT: October 2011]

I have a 2 year old HP Pavilion DV6 laptop. I went to shut off my computer and it ran the updates. It has been stuck on update 6 of 9 for 12 hours now. Please help! This sucks. I can see why Apple is taking back market share in the OS market. This is so lame. [PT: October 2011]

@Brett: Not sure if you’ve been back to see the comments by @Jess but she has the same laptop you do and is seeing problems too. So that might be it – something Microsoft didn’t account for, or an issue with the DV6 that just hasn’t shown its ugly head until now. [PT: October 2011]

This likewise crashed my Windows 7 computer, at least, it will reboot, but then reports an error (without a code) and then reboots within about 2 minutes of loading Windows, reboots, reports error (you get the picture, an infinite reboot loop). It won’t display the new updates in the program menu so I can’t remove them manually and unfortunately had no system restore point (won’t make that mistake again!). What a mess. Anyone figured out what the offending update of the 8 is? [PT: October 2011]

@Rev. Paul L. Vasquez: What’s the make and model of your computer? You could try individually applying the updates and restarting after each one but that would be kind of a pain. I’ve installed the updates on several of my client’s computers and I’m not seeing anything yet. A few others have commented that they’re using the same HP laptop model so maybe there’s something to that. [PT: October 2011]

My computer is also an HP Pavillion dv6. I wonder if that is the reason, an incompatibility Microsoft has not yet figured out. Thankfully, my computer had a restore point but I will not be installing the updates until we can isolate the offending one(s). For now, I have hidden the updates so they won’t be installed when I shut down my computer.

For those who don’t know how to use this feature, if you go to the screen where you select what updates with a check box to install, just right click on the update you want to hide (for me, as of now, all of them!) select Hide Update and it’ll be hidden. To get them back later, on the home windows update screen sidebar select ‘Restore Hidden Updates.’ [PT: October 2011]

@Jess: I’d agree that that’s a likely possibility. Any other HP Pavilion DV6 users out there with the same problem? [PT: October 2011]

I’m almost convinced that this is an incompatibility issue with the HP Pavillion dv6 after hearing what you’ve said – the fact that it’s so isolated seems to be an indicator of why we haven’t seen much else of this. Hopefully, Microsoft will address this. I don’t believe it is an issue with the PC itself, considering I’ve never had any other issues with installing updates. [PT: October 2011]

@Jess: There certainly might be something going on here. Looking at the several more comments left over the weekend though, at least some issues are being seen on other systems and some DV6 owners didn’t see a problem. But still, there’s probably something similar among all of you. [PT: October 2011]

Microsoft screwed this patch up big time.
I had 3 computers. 1 with xp..desktop, 1 win 7 desktop, 1 laptop with xp also. luckily I had ubuntu on the laptop and it is the only thing running.
Thank you microsoft for killing my computers.

Also noticed on 1 computer that it enabled the microsoft windows firewall service that I had disabled. It killed my Panda Antivirus creating runtime errors. I luckily had an image I created with symantec backup exec and restored the desktops in 2 hrs.

Won’t trust that again. Disabled the service for MS updates. If hackers gain control of the computer it is much better than a dead computer…lol [PT: October 2011]

I have a 2005 HP Media Center PC with XP Pro. It was working fine until the 9 Microsoft updates were downloaded Wednesday night, 10/12. Ever since, my computer goes into an endless reboot. Today I used the F8 key and clicked on something like a System Restore; I don’t recall the exact wording, but it said approximately “Use last known configurations that worked.” Everything works right now, but I won’t be able to download these 9 latest updates until we know which update is causing the endless reboot. [PT: October 2011]

@Kara: Yea, I’d hold off until we hear something. I’ve been looking around and I’m still not seeing reports ANYWHERE like I’m seeing here and Microsoft hasn’t addressed any issues about these updates that I’ve seen. [PT: October 2011]

I have lost just about everything. Icons, favorite list, and afer searching for a long time finally found IE. Used to be an icon now I have to go to start menu and log on from there.
Also Internet Explorer changed its look and has this new thing of typing out ahead of you. I hate it. Want my old Internet Explorer back. Have HP G60 Notebook PC-32 bit.
Everythings different. Have 2 email accounts and can’t access one. Never had this happen on update before. What happened? [PT: October 2011]

@mary: That sounds like a lot more than those updates did. You may have also updated IE in the process. You could try a System Restore – there should be a restore point for the date that those patches (and whatever else) were installed. [PT: October 2011]

The only thing I can conclusively say from reading these comments is that is an HP issue. Most likely, one of these updates unexpectedly conflicts with certain HP software. Hopefully, Microsoft/Windows will pinpoint and solve the issue so we can install these “important security updates” without ruining our computers. It is interesting, however, that all of us seem to have different issues. I got the Blue Screen of Death on start up after my computer installed the updates, and others seem to be getting endless reboots, hang ups, or having other areas of their PC ruined. If these terms are the same, I apologize.

All I want is for Microsoft to address it for now. A fix can come later, if it does at all, I would just like to be absolutely sure it’s not my computer. [PT: October 2011]

@Jess: Yea, it’s all very strange. I’ll be sure to post here if I hear anything.

Hmm………I have an HP Pavilion dv6-11 Ous and did not have any problems with the updates. [PT: October 2011]

@Parker: Do you have the original Windows installation that came with your computer or have you clean installed it or uninstalled any HP software? Just trying to figure out why you might have had a different outcome. [PT: October 2011]

hp G70-460US Notebook PC
VISTA premium
of the 3 updates they said i needed one refused to install [PT: October 2011]

@VOXPOP: Which one refused to install, if you know? [PT: October 2011]

I have a Dell Inspiron desktop, runing Vista…and these updates caused mine to crash. Did a system restore to before the updates wre installed. I won’t update again until I hear what the problems are…..Definitely not just an HP issue… [PT: October 2011]

@MB: Hmm… I wonder if you share a software program or specific configuration with some of those HP owners? I’m tempted to have you all send me in a report on your system information but I don’t know if I have time to sort through it all. Hopefully MS gets this figured out soon. [PT: October 2011]

I have a HP note book with Windows 7 installed. It was running fine ,but the next morning it wouldn’t let me play any you tube video,s. Said that I needed the lastest flash player installed, which I already had done way before this and it was working fine. So I uninstalled it and re-installed the Lastest flash player and it still don’t work. I am very annoyed at this point. I can not say for sure if it was due to lastest down loads or not but it worked good before. Any help would be welcome, thanks. [PT: October 2011]

@Tom: What browser are you using? [PT: October 2011]

Running HP Pavilion DV7, downunder. No problems this way with updates. [PT: October 2011]

I have not had any problems with the recent updates for my HP Pavilion a1483 w/AMD 64 Athlon-X2. I have not installed on my HP 2004 media computer yet, but so far, I have not had any problems from updates for a while. Better than they have been in the past with illegal updates. [PT: October 2011]

Have a brand new Lenovo desktop H405. Worked GREAT until last few days (since update patches last week). Now have a hesitation every few minutes, and cursor and keyboard freezes for up to a minute. No disc activity, but can’t look at processes or services while locked up to maybe see what’s going on. Then it’s OK for awhile, then sporadic lockups/freezes again. Can’t find any specific pattern just normal browsing. Using Chrome and IE8 for Browsing, has locked up with both.

6Gb of memory, 1T-byte disk, Athlon quad core CPU.

Has operated lighting fast for a month except for the past few days.

Baffled! what have you done, Microsoft? [PT: October 2011]

I have Toshiba Satellite E105 laptop running Vista Home premium.

After the update, Office wouldn’t operate properly….would open but files won’t print (both excel and Word) and both programs freeze up. Other SW programs won’t even open.

Tried to restore…tried 3 different restore points and while it looked like the restore completed, after Windows rebooted, right at the end of the process I got a message that due to “unknown error” the restore couldn’t be completed.

After researching this problem, I realized I could restore in SAFE MODE and have better success. I did the restore that way and it DID work. I assumed all would be well.

Not the case….Office still screwed, other SW won’t open. Tried downloading MS “Fixit” SW…won’t download, Windows Installer problem (I’ve fixed that….somehow it was turned off so I’ve turned it back on).

Tried using “last known good configuration”….still have problem.

No idea how to fix this mess. [PT: October 2011]

@Jim: Is it primarily an Office issue now? Have you tried the ‘detect and repair’ feature there? [PT: October 2011]

My computer also BSOD after the updates. It is a brand new HP Pavilion g6. Not updating again. Updates are supposed to help the computer not try and murder it. [PT: October 2011]

I have a Toshiba Satellite L355D, My laptop crashed after the last update I had. I finally logged on with safe mode, did a restore to time before the update and it is ok now.

Makes me unsure I want to do any other updates. I can’t afford to lose my data. Is there a way to download updates manually and know which one NOT to do.

Tina [PT: October 2011]

@Tina: You can download the updates individually via the security bulletin link I have at the end of the blog post. The only way you could tell is to install one update at a time, reboot, and test. [PT: October 2011]

Dell Inspiron dektop running Windows 7 Home Premium very messed up after updates! Microsoft Office 10 was uninstalled, icons were gone from the desktop. Internet Explorer was changed (new version?). Home page reset to something microsoft. My favorites were gone, although I eventually found them in a sub-layer of microsoft favorites. I was able to do a system restore to get my machine back, but I have changed update to manual until microsoft figures this out. [PT: October 2011]

Installed updates and now the only problem is that when I turn on my HP desktop I get the BIOS black /grey screen that says BIOS has been loaded due to a BIOS update or checksum issue and then everything loads ok EXCEPT I now have to change my date and time. Sad [PT: October 2011]

@Diane: I really don’t think the Patch Tuesday updates could have done that. It likely a coincidence. The issue you’re seeing is probably due to a dying CMOS battery – which are a couple of bucks at any electronics or major retailer (look for a CR2032 battery where the other batteries are sold) – and really easy to replace. You might want to take yours in to compare just in case. [PT: October 2011]

I have an older home built computer running Win7 (ASUS P5B Deluxe, E6400 CPU) and these updates killed my system. Even a system image hasn’t worked. Still troubleshooting. [PT: October 2011]

@SL: What kind of issues are you seeing? [PT: October 2011]

I have a Dell PC, Inspiron I think – running Windows 7, and I primarily use Firefox as my browser.

I don’t know other technical details about this computer, sorry.

Just want to say though, that after installing these latest updates, I am having a LOT of trouble connecting to various websites.

One thing that keeps happening is when I try to go to a site,
the tab gets that little circle spinning, it says “Connecting” – and then it just stops. That’s the end of it. The circle stops spinning, the page doesn’t load, and I’m out of luck.

I uninstalled the stupid updates and it’s still happening.

I can’t do my banking, can’t pay for stuff I bought, can’t browse the web.

I’ve rebooted and re-rebooted but nothing helps.

Sorry, I’m not a techie and can’t explain more clearly, all I know is everything worked before the updates, and now nothing works. [PT: October 2011]

@JuneNJ: Have you tried IE in addition to Firefox? Are they both doing the same thing? [PT: October 2011]

Updates crashed 2 Windows XP machines and had to refomat them. Froze 2 Windows 7 laptops and had to start them in safe mode with networking and return them to recovery point. [PT: October 2011]

@Smoore: I tell ya, October 2011 has NOT been a successful Patch Tuesday! When you reformatted the 2 XP machines, did you then apply all the updates successfully or are they working because you’re holding off on them? [PT: October 2011]

Installed this patch last night and lost everything. All came back with System Restore, but I will NOT re-install these again til MS fixes things. I am running a 2007 XP Dell. [PT: October 2011]

@elea: Since these reports seem isolated (I know this post is full of them, but there’s little else to be found about problems with this month’s patches), I’d guess that Microsoft will either do nothing about it, or will provide a solution in another round of updates on another Patch Tuesday. I’ll keep my eye out for something like that when they release the data for November’s. [PT: October 2011]

Tim, to answer your question, I am holding off on installing them. I am too afraid to do it again….. [PT: October 2011]

@Smoore: Understandable. [PT: October 2011]

My HP Pavilion running Vista Premium was just eaten by the updates. Am doing a full restore now in hopes of recovering the few items I did have on the hard drive. Note to self: you bought an external for a reason…..use ONLY the external! [PT: October 2011]

This Oct. 11 update has nearly ruined my computer and I have no restore point to go back to. The update itself took hours and multiple reboots to complete. Since then I’ve had 3 blue screen crashes, several spontaneous reboots (in the middle of work), and several times daily when my computer just decides for 2-4 minutes that it has more important work to do than respond to my commands. Whatever app I’m using gives me the “not responding” during this time. Usually, after several minutes, they return to normal. What in hell is Microsoft doing with my computer during this time? If I could dump the last update, I sure would. [PT: October 2011]

I also have a Dell Inspiron win 7 Home Prem. 64bit machine. I also had to restore to previous version. Messed with my audio/video something terrible, froze up the whole system,screwed with my ASC program and my firefox browser, hell i couldn’t get onto a page/website at all, only could see Google search results,click the website link, timed out!! Have went to manual on the updates myself now. GRRRR Starting to really get sick of Window’s crap! BTW, i hate Quickset app on this Dell..Just wanted to mention that too! [PT: October 2011]

I too am running a HP pavillion slimline and since the update on Tuesday my computer says it has issues and I keep having to restore it to a point to before the updates, or it just starts to boot, gives up half way through and resorts to saying ‘no signal.’ It is taking me at least an hour everyday to get the thing up and running and now I hardly dare turn it off. [PT: October 2011]

Same problems as everyone else. Luckily, I did a restore point before the updates but it was still difficult getting my computer to load and stay on long enough without rebooting to get to the restore point. HP Pavilion as well, mine is old though No updates for me anytime soon! [PT: October 2011]

Crashed mine as well, NOTHING WORKS!! not system restore or safe mode… help!!!!!!!!!!!! [PT: October 2011]

@pAULA: What version of Windows do you have? [PT: October 2011]

HP Pavilion p6636f, Windows7 here. I too started getting BSOD after the update, with either a MEMORY_something error or IRQL_IS_NOT_LESS_THAN type thing. System Restored back as far as I could go didn’t fix. Wound up having to order System Recovery discs from HP and reset to factory conditions. Thankfully I had a recent data backup on an external HD.

After the recovery I wasn’t sure the update was the problem, and it ran automatically again, and the BSODs started right back up. This time, though, a System Restore to before the update seems to have fixed it. No more automatic updates for me! [PT: October 2011]

Contacted MS about these updates. Got the “usual” -download one at a time in clean boot mode. Restart, then see which one updates caused the crash…seriously???? Not downloading anything until there is a common thread identified with the problems. Apple is looking more and more interesting these days….. [PT: October 2011]

Especially now that after the restore I have 90+ updates pending… [PT: October 2011]

Anyone have HD led always on problems since update?, tried safe mode still nothing. [PT: October 2011]

not just hp, got a dell t5400 same issue with the patches. wont let me system restore or do anything. looks like gotta do fresh install again. this is just stupid [PT: October 2011]

Having problems on HP Pavillion N9100Z (AMD Quad Core) running Vista. All updates including SP-2 build 6002.

No BSOD, thankfully… but… Computer will not resume from sleep mode. Monitors never come back on, computer will run with high fan speed for 20+ minutes (gave up after 20 minutes).

System restore gets me back to a good place, pre-updates. I’ve tried restoring from sleep with no problems, then re-installing the updates and the problem returns.

Looks like these are important security updates. I hope MS gets this resolved soon. [PT: October 2011]

This is why 3 of 4 of my computers are Macs. I will never buy another Windows machine. My new computer, running W7, 64 bit is stuck installing update 1 of 1 for 35 minutes now.

I maintain computers for three different companies, many individuals, as well as myself, and these updates have hosed all but one computer. Just waiting to see if it eventually crashes. Thanks Microsoft. All computers had ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards and AMD processors. [PT: October 2011]

@Dennis: That’s amazing (in a bad way, of course) and I haven’t heard of anything that widespread. Did you get any sort of information from Microsoft? [PT: October 2011]

Hello! After the updates my computer needs about three startups before it runs ok without switching off. I have a amd processor and a gigabyte motherboard. [PT: October 2011]

Has anyone found a fix for this? This is ridiculus. After System Restore, I can finally boot back into Windows 7, but it will freeze (no BSOD, just frozen) after sometime and I have to hard reset it again. I am going to reinstall if that is truly the only solution and make sure these updates never hit my system. ASUS mb, AMD cpu, Corsair RAM, Crucial SSD, Win 7 Pro 64-bit SP1. [PT: October 2011]

@chichian: I have yet to see anything from Microsoft about any issues with the updates. Obviously there were, and there must be some common denominator, but it’s obviously not a simple one. Maybe they’ll release an update with the next Patch Tuesday that will quietly fix the issues? Who knows, but I’ll dig through them and let you guys know either way. [PT: October 2011]

I have an Acer Aspire laptop running Vista, those updates caused HAVOC on my poor little laptop! Had to reset to factory, and not knowing what the problem was updated again reset again. Still didn’t know what the problem was, updated again, had to attempt the reset 4 times before it would actually reset!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Microsoft can kiss my A$$! Pulling my old Macbook out of the closet and hoping Santa will bring me a new one for Christmas! Thank God, I didn’t have our desktop set to auto update. Have they fixed BTW? [PT: October 2011]

@GRRR..: No, I haven’t seen a fix. As I was telling the last poster, if I see something, I’ll let you all know. [PT: October 2011]

Hello again!

Found maybe a solution to this! It solved my problem anyways. I updated my motherboard bios drives. Before I did this i got a BSoD and saw that it was due to a kernel error. So reading up on kernel problems I found out that updating your bios might fix it. and it did!

Anyways! Hope it helps someone else out there! [PT: October 2011]

@Peter75: Thanks for the info! I suppose it’s possible that one or more of these updates made changes that in turn affected some motherboards with a certain kind of issue – one that a BIOS update by the manufacturer fixed at some point prior to the updates. I wonder if anyone else might have the same “luck” with that. [PT: October 2011]

Although I too have done this in the past (given an incorrect date), today is the 9th of November, not the 11th. Don’t let let the pressure get to you! [PT: November 2011]

@Bill W: Thanks Bill! Will fix. [PT: November 2011]

Update Nov 8 2011 crashes explorer. Explore opens but stays completed blank (non branded computer) everything worked fine for year previous. [PT: November 2011]

Found Solution to explorer crash from Nov 8 2011 update, on my system, previous update “Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2607576) had not installed. When I manually installed it explorer problem seems to be resolved. [PT: November 2011]

@Greg S: Thanks for that information! Hopefully that’ll help out someone seeing the same thing. I’ve updated your comment with a link to that previous update. [PT: November 2011]

Went to turn off my pc because it had not recognized a jump drive. HBw a 4 yr old aver aspire running xp with all service packs. It’s been installing update 1 of 4 for nearly an hour. I can occasionally hear hard drive activity. This is holding everyone up on a small peer to peer network. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! [PT: November 2011]

@Marlene: I’ve seen Windows XP actually complete updates after several hours, not that you want to wait that long. Of course I’ve only seen that a few times – most of the time it won’t. Windows “should” have created a restore point before applying the updates, which gives you an out if just resetting right now messes things up. If I were you, I’d wait another hour (if you can) and if it still hasn’t worked, reset the computer, enter the ABO menu and then do Last Known Good Configuration. If that doesn’t work, you can boot in to Safe Mode and start a System Restore. It’s a risk, as neither method might work depending on how bad resetting here messes up your PC. [PT: November 2011]

November update bricking a lot of computers. BSOD with an unmountable boot sector error is the worst I have seen so far. [PT: November 2011]

@Lee: Oh boy, not again. How many computers have you seen November 2011’s updates break? Did you have any issues on any of them when they received October 2011’s? [PT: November 2011]

Yesterday I had 2 separate incidents take place with 2 different computers. One was an older Dell desktop with Windows 7 installed. It originally had Windows XP Home on it. It has been running very good for several Months. The customer called and said it stopped booting on Nov, 11th or 12th 2011 after she downloaded Windows update. The second computer was a Compaq Presario that originally had Windows XP Home. First, the customer said that drivers started disappearing and had trouble booting. The restore point was a temporary fix but then the Windows update installed some updates and now the computer won’t boot without wanting to be repaired, which doesn’t work.These are 2 separate customers experiencing the same problems. Both systems had a warning also asking to be re-activated. I have to fix them both tomorrow. [PT: November 2011]

@Jim: I sure wish I could get something out of Microsoft on these issues, but I’m failing at that task. [PT: November 2011]

After the recent installations, my HP laptop is just acting crazy. IE keeps crashing, it asks me if I want to debug a script error on just about any page that I go to. I paid $99 to HP for a service plan–but they are useless. ALWAYS with HP, after a few minutes trying to solve the problem, they go to the nuclear option–you’ll have to restore your entire computer. This has happened over and over with HP. I paid another $49 to Microsoft and they were a bit better, but not much. The technician I spoke with today about what these updates have done to my Hotmail said he would send me a link for Hotmail customer service. The link he sent???? It was for a password reset! @#@#$%%!!!!! Bottom line is that all these tech companies just take your money and then fluff you off afterwards. I’m not going the HP – Microsoft route in future. I have finally seen the light and will buy Apple–that is unless and until it too rots. [PT: November 2011]

I too have had major problems since the last round (or rounds (?)) of updates…so much so that I have to keep restoring to a point back in October.

I first thought it was a video card driver update causing the problem, but after seeing the other posts here, I’m not so sure now.
In my case, following the updates and subsequent restart, I could never make it to even the splash screen…my monitor would lose signal just before the “Starting Windows” screen would appear (which is why I was thinking it was video related (???)). At other times, the monitor would keep a signal, but it was simply a black screen (left it that way overnight hoping that something was going on in the background, but nope, was that way in the morning!). This happens to be the last state.

I have yet to determine which particular update is causing this issue!!!

Any ideas or maybe some new info from Microsoft yet?

Thanks,
Kyle [PT: November 2011]

@Kyle: Sorry Kyle… I haven’t heard anything yet. I keep reading the documentation updates for these patches and I’m not seeing anything. Even though there are lots of comments here, I think the fallout from the patches must have been small overall. [PT: November 2011]

After last update my computer crashed and nothing happens. Just a black screen and the computer on, but no HD activity. Lenovo machine thats only 2 years old.
OS: win7 pro. [PT: November 2011]

@Sash: At least one user had luck updating his BIOS. Might be worth a shot. However, if the computer doesn’t come on AT ALL, that’s before your computer even looks at the hard drive, let alone Windows performing any sort of control of the computer. So your issue probably isn’t related. [PT: November 2011]

After this last update my computer goes crazy.
I start it up and get to the desktop and suddenly everything stops responding (can still move the mouse) and icons turn white. I get a message saying a windows application has stopped responding sometimes and when I click end process everything goes away (literally). Rolled back to a previous setting everything worked fine, but after I restarted my PC it redownloaded the update and everything stopped responding again.

Please fix this [PT: November 2011]

@Mike: Next time you roll back the changes, disable the automatic updates from Control Panel so you don’t continue on this back and forth with Microsoft. I’d hold off on updates unless there’s one you really think you need or someone hears something from MS about a fix. [PT: November 2011]

Windows 7 64 bit Lenovo ThinkPad T420. These 4 patches go on but, a couple of days later the entire machine crashes, will not restart, Windows Startup Repair fails and I have to use System Restore. Installed the patches one more time today. If problem recurs for the third time I will not reinstall. [PT: November 2011]

still a problem as of 11//28/11. crashed my brand new HP [PT: November 2011]

Gateway sx2800-01 desktop crashed. Had to do system restore. Not happy with windows 7 update [PT: November 2011]

I have W7 64 bits Home Premium on a Quad Core 9550 CPU with an Intel 45GD motherboard + 8 GB RAM, and went through the same problem. I had to switch off automatic updates, then roll back to a previous stable version to get the machine to boot up again. [PT: November 2011]

After this update and reboot , my screen is dead.
The computer is making beep noises but nothing at all appears on the screen.
I tried a different screen but same thing.
This computer holds all of my business info and i am totally pissed off with microsoft , i swear i will never purchase a windows based computer again. [PT: December 2011]

@Adriaan: Windows doesn’t have control of your computer before the hard drive is accessed so if you’ve restarted and NOTHING happens and/or you’re getting beeping noises, then it’s just a coincidence. Try this. [PT: December 2011]

Bricked my windoze 7 laptop… [PT: December 2011]

@hatems: Where is your laptop stopping in the startup process? [PT: December 2011]

I just installed the ‘important’ windows updates that were detected yesterday 12/12/2011. Now, I can’t launch Outlook, Firefox and other apps on my taskbar..I could launch IE9 which is why I can post this. I turned off my av (webroot) and still no luck. I’m going to a restore point, I’m going to turn off the automatic windows updates. What happened???? [PT: December 2011]

@thomas1004: One or more updates caused a problem – which one(s) is hard to determine without installing each one individually, on your computer, restarting between each one. And that won’t solve the problem, it’ll just narrow it down. Then you can troubleshoot it. [PT: December 2011]

Crashed my PC with Vista Home Premium…needed to restore to system restore point of 12/13/11. Took a few restarts able that to finally get it going. Backed it up, then shut it down, but then it wanted to install 19 updates. We shall see if the cycle continues when i get back home. [PT: December 2011]

My computer crashed had to restore to last patch [PT: December 2011]

Today my Dell laptop (Win 7) keyboard quits when I start Google Chrome. The wireless keyboard also quits working. When I shut down Chrome it begins working again. Using Firefox now, which I avoid because the Flash plugin is such a resource hog… [PT: December 2011]

@Gina P: Are you pretty sure this started happening after the December updates? [PT: December 2011]

Today’s patch totally messed up my Sony PC. IE, Outlook Express, getting into Help, and other programs will not run now. Microsoft FixIt will not run also. Can’t get into sytem restore. I also tryed it in Safe Mode. Can’t find anything on the Microsoft web site. Any suggestions to restore my PC. It’s running XP Help… [PT: December 2011]

@Tom M: Have you tried System Restore from Safe Mode? [PT: December 2011]

Followup (I posted yesterday):
The system booted up. Upon inspection, I saw that a readiness tool update dated august 2011 (KB947821) had not been installed for some reason. I installed that. I have auto updates turned off now…I lost any ignorant trust I had with MS and hope a strategy of installing days or weeks after the masses might work…so MS can pull any gotchas from the queue.
I have had this PC for years on auto update and never had a problem before. Here are the updates that are listed in the update history as failed…
KB2633952
KB2620712
KB905866
KB2639417
KB2619339
KB2633171
[PT: December 2011]

@Dave: Thanks for all the information. I looked at the details on these and it’s nothing weird. They all applied fine to my Windows Vista system here. I thought maybe it was getting hung on the first one for you, but that’s just the biannual update for daylight saving time that I see. Nothing that would cause problems… though you never know I guess. [PT: December 2011]

The updates bricked my Sony Vaio. After installing them and restarting my laptop I got the “Preparing to Configure Windows” screen indefinitely. One system restore later and here I am. Auto updating has been disabled and I’m anxiously awaiting Microsoft’s announcement and fix. [PT: December 2011]

@Matt L: Good luck on that “announcement”… haven’t seen that happen but for issues that enterprise customers see. [PT: December 2011]

Samsung R510 laptop running Vista.

1) Updates applied, restarted to Black Screen (power light on).
2) Forced restart by holding down power button until it switched off.
3) Switched back on, and boot into recovery mode (automatically).
4) Samsung Recovery Mode carried out a restore, then restarted to Black Screen.
5) Repeat 2 and 3.
6) Samsung Recovery Mode carried out 2nd restore, this time it boots ok.
7) Windows tells me to update my system. Repeat from 1!

Annoyingly, I have 8 updates to apply, but don’t have time to go through them individually! [PT: December 2011]

I have a HP Pavilion DV6-3225dx and have had no problems since I bought it in April. After the recent Windows update, the screen randomly goes black every hour or so, and I have to sign in again. I double-checked my power settings, and I have it set to “never” sleep when it’s plugged in (which it always is). So the Windows update must have caused this problem. [PT: December 2011]

Someone should tell Microsoft that if you pay peanuts you’ll get monkeys

The above is why I never turn on Windows update on any machine I run or set up. I use common sense, good firewall and av. [PT: December 2011]

Dec 2011 updates totally screwed 2 pcs, one at work one at home,
Work pc was a vostro 220s
CD rom boot priority No Medium
Missing or corrupt files
windows\system32\config\system
No coincindence when two pcs go down with exactly the same error code.
After 1.5 hours on the line with dell support they came up with software error and I need to pay for extra support, i said this is impossible, then they agreed to send out the new parts below.
Dell sending out a new dvd/cdrom and hard drive for work pc. Home PC is shot, needs new HD. Wont reload from safe mode, same error message copmes up, wont recognise dvd/cdrom.
Something very strange going on. [PT: December 2011]

I applied the updates for Windows XP (64-bit) today, and got the BSOD. I was able to boot in safe mode and use add/remove programs to get rid of the updates, and that seemed to resolve the problem. I’ll wait a while before trying the updates again in the hope that Microsoft will resolve the problem. [PT: December 2011]

Got a BSOD error on my Thinkpad T400 after installing all delivered December 2011 patches. Had to use System restore. Would be great to know which of these update in particular caused the prob. [PT: December 2011]

Hi,

updates just bricked my laptop too, windows 7, just boots to black screen!

Doh!

Ubuntu here I come! [PT: December 2011]

Windows 7 64 bit on a 2 year old Gateway. December 15 2011 update, it booted to a black screen with a beep, then nothing. I powered off, restarted, then Windows finally came up. It then caused freeze up condition after reboot. After about 2 min, computer freezes with no response from keyboard or mouse. Power off, and it happens again after a few minutes. Occurred right after the update was applied. It similar problem back on Oct when an update was installed, but I had a few BSOD on the Oct update to go along with the freezes. Took about a week to get it fixed back then. Updating the bios from manufacturer and getting new drivers for the motherboard and video card from the cards manufacturer website seem to solve the problem in Oct.

Looks like I need to turn the Auto Windows Update off for the near future. I’ll just keep the drivers updated manually, no sense letting Microsoft brick my computer with bad drivers and updates. Will do system restore to hopefully get it back to a useful configuration. [PT: December 2011]

My husband and I both ran windows updates today, and have both run into a problem. We have no internet connectivity. It says our computers are on an Unknown Network, or something to that liking. We just have no LAN connection. Has anyone else had this same problem? It is very frustrating. [PT: December 2011]

@clbia: I haven’t heard of your issue in particular. Did the updates all apply? You can check in Windows Update from Control Panel. If so, then just troubleshooting this as a normal issue is probably the best way to go forward. Post about this in my forum and we can work through it. [PT: December 2011]

After updates this week, at turn-on my computer now gets to the point of showing the Windows XP “flag”, then a blue screen, then restarts. This cycle repeats until I turn off the power. It looks like others have this problem too. [PT: December 2011]

@Mike: Are you able to enter Safe Mode? [PT: December 2011]

Something in the December 13, 2011 updates is causing my screen to be black, although Windows is obviously up and running. It was a struggle to come up in Safe Mode, and I restored to an earlier date.
Windows 7, IE 9.0.8112.16421, Outlook 2003 [PT: December 2011]

Tuesday night I watched a just-cleaned and slicked Vista hang in front of me, then on Wednesday I watched two clean Win 7’s do the same and Saturday I went on a call for another Win 7 that had hung during updating and the customer did a destructive reload before calling me. These were all old customers of mine; the Vista and two of the Win 7’s were running Eset NOD32. The third Win 7 was running Avira. All were up-to-date on their AV definitions and applicable patches and were clean (the Avira as far as its owner knew). The Sx were all the same. Upon restart, they would hang at the “Preparing To Configure Windows Updates – Do Not Shut Off or Unplug Your Computer” screen. No amount of waiting changed this – they were HUNG. On the Vista and one of the Win7’s a crapshoot hard restart succeeded in completing the installation and did no apparent damage. On the other Win 7 the boot sector was damaged and I had to rebuild it using one of my Windows disks. When I applied the December 2012 updates to the next two computers on my bench, yet another Win 7 and an XP, I disabled the AV before applying the updates and everything went just fine. This is a new one for me – never had a Windows update mess with or be messed with by a standard, plain-vanilla AV app before. Will take more care in the future and disable the AV before applying Windows Updates. [PT: December 2011]

@Ken Nightingale: This is the first lead I’ve seen. Thanks for the information. I’ve also never had to worry about AV protection being on during Windows patches but I’m going to start. [PT: December 2011]

I have been stressing for the past week, searching on line and until I found you guys I thought I was the only one who had trouble with these updates. I thought it may be related to language packs (I remember seeing something similar when this happened to me back with service pack 1) so I uninstalled all but english(never meant to install them anyway). As was said earlier by someone else, this has destroyed what little trust I had that microsoft might actually care about its customers. After all its not like these days you can just do a complete reinstall, Microsoft thinks your pinching their glitchy, malfunctioning software! I have had to do numerous restore points, I backed up my PC several times because the last thing I wanted to do is reinstall every update, but microsoft doesn’t seem all that interested that its product is turning people off it in droves. I hope they wake up soon! [PT: December 2011]

Auto-installed updates in an XP system on Fri 12/16. Now seeing endless reboots that began with restart after the updates: Normal bios screen, then windows xp banner screen, then blue screen, then reboot. [PT: December 2011]

Update to my previous comments
Windows 7 64 bit (retail) installed on a 2 year old Gateway. Computer has Vista from factory. System restore didn’t fix problems. Never had a problem like this before, system always ran fine. Comments above from others seem to say the same thing. Updating all drivers didn’t fix problems. Memory has been checked out and working just fine. Random freezing when computer is idle, but programs running. Leaving the computer unused for 2 to 3 minutes and everything freezes up, requiring a hard reboot. Only thing to blame the problem on is Micro$oft and that stupid update. I think I have wasted about 10-15 hours just this week just trying to fix this problem. If anyone at Micro$oft is reading these comments, just want you to know I spent an hour today at the Apple website looking over what will most likely be my next computer. You just lost a customer of almost 20 years. I had PCs since 1992 with each version of Windows from 3.1. I even paid retail to upgrade to a new version of Windows twice. Never had so many problems until Windows 7. [PT: December 2011]

We have several almost new Dell laptops at work with Windows 7 Pro x64 and after Dec updates will not boot up properly. We get a screen that says “Windows is loading files� then it just goes to a dark blank screen. I think it is not able to repair itself because of the McAfee Endpoint encryption that is on all of our laptop drives. Anyone have any idea which update is causing this issue? I think there was 8 or 9 Windows 7 security updates. [PT: December 2011]

@John: I still haven’t heard a thing from Microsoft after several questions. I’m going to try to take part in the January Q&A after those updates. Something tells me the comments will be pouring in again. [PT: December 2011]

Spent as much time searching for a post concerning issues with the December 2011 Security Update as I did trying to resolve my own.

Sadly, I still have not figured out why my 32bit XP Pro, gaming rig (ATX), that I have downloaded security updates on for over 4 years w/out a hiccup, suddenly rebooted to a Black screen after this update.

During my many failed attempts at trying to reboot to desktop, safe-mode, or anything but the black screen, I discovered that if I shut it down via the power-on button (held it down till it shut-off manually), when I powered-up again, just a few (3-8) hours later, the system boots up without a hitch, that is until I have to reboot again.

Thanks to these posts, I now know what I must do. Turn off auto update and restore. [PT: December 2011]

I replaced the hard drive in my Dell 9300 in November and unfortunately decided to replace XP with Win7 at the wrong time. I bought a copy of Win7 OEM from a vendor and it installed fine except for the audio driver. I proceeded to install the 92 updates MS said were needed and it crashed. After many, many hours of discussions with my son and about 6 reinstallations and recovery attempts, I decided to trade the OEM version with Win7 Ultimate w/sp1 upgrade with the vendor and try it. At least I could have tech support from MS if that crashed and I couldn’t recover. I installed the Ultimate version w/sp1 without any trouble, installed only the important updates, and it crashed again. During 2 hrs with MS support I reinstalled again and gave control to the tech. She proceeded to install only the security updates and it crashed again. She spoke with her supervisor andtold me my system was defective.

I then decided to repeat the process myself, except I installed the security updates two at a time till I got to the last two and it crashed. I researched those two numbers and found that other people were having trouble with the Nov 2011 patch, so I reinstalled and installed everything except the Nov 2011 patch and everything worked fine until I shut the browser down. The next time I started the computer, it couldn’t connect with my router and so I couldn’t connect to the network After much research, I reinstalled again and only installed the secirity updates except KB2619339 and no other updates. I have since installed my audio and video drivers, MSE and MS Office 2003 and turned off automatic updates. I then made an image file of the system. There are still a ton of updates, including Office that want to be installed, but everything is wworking fine now and I don’t really want to have to reinstall everything again. I see that some people are having trouble with the December2011 paatch too, so I think I’ll wait till MS gets their act together.

Marty Daly [PT: December 2011]

December Vista updates cause some issues with HP/Compaq 6730s laptop. Upon install it would take forever to boot up. (To the point I thought it was locking up) Tried restarting multiple times with same results. Removed updates and waiting for fix. [PT: December 2011]

Help

installed the latest vista updates today and my laptop crashed. It starts but windows wont open and it wont do a system restore. I just get a black screen with the following code flickering:

!! Oxc01936!!1315/71048 (msisp.dll) [PT: December 2011]

@jiM: Have you tried a System Restore via the System Recovery Options menu from the Vista bootable disc? [PT: December 2011]

I have the same problem – BSOD after installing the 8 updates.
Seem to have tracked it down to KB2633171 – Uninstalled it and touch wood , so far my machines have behaved [PT: January 2012]

@SR: Did this happen on more than one machine? Was antivirus running?

I wouldn’t worry too much about not having this one, unless this is a “public” machine. The notes on the vulnerability, of which this patch corrects, says: “An attacker must have valid logon credentials and be able to log on locally to exploit this vulnerability. The vulnerability could not be exploited remotely or by anonymous users.” [PT: January 2012]

pcs not connecting as they normally should after ssl patch by Micro$oft [PT: January 2012]

@kk: What exactly is happening? And it’s more than one computer? Same setups? [PT: January 2012]

Server 2003 Ent w Mcafee updated early this morning and proceeded to have problems. On reboot, it hangs. Event log shows problems occurring immediately after updates. I backed them off but still won’t start normally. [PT: January 2012]

@Optimus: Did the Event Log show anything useful or was it just a canned error? [PT: January 2012]

Update hanged on me last night. It was on “3 of 10″ for hours. Something tells me this update is highly flawed. [PT: January 2012]

@Kojiro: Seems the last several have been “highly flawed”. [PT: January 2012]

Took all 8 patches and applied to my Win XP PC, then on reboot went into an infinite reboot loop whilst loading up windows. I suspected old driver incompatible to the updated OS but, was unable to even run XP OS Safe mode to check what was failing. Using win xp recovery console I ran a chkdsk /P on system disk and there was no problems reading the hard disk. Also ran debug mode OS and had the Stop 0000135 Winsrv not found BSOD which lead to me suspect OS files corrupted or incompatible with drivers.

Had to spend 1 hour running Win XP DVD then running the repair utility (not the system recover option, but a new XP install, then upon the install program checking for existing OS installation, it detected existing partition and I ran the repair facility which copied over a bunch of OS stuff and took about 45mins)
Finally could boot to old accounts and now doing a backup.
Not sure what else in the registry with respect to applications are working or not now, will have to try and see. [PT: January 2012]

Last night the laptop my wife was using (Samsung r480 with bluray) installed some windows update that required a restart. My wife delayed the restart for about 20 minutes or so and then restarted the machine. Big mistake. The machine flashed the samsung screen which gives you the options to F2 into Bios or F4 into recovery but then the black screen with blinking white cursor appeared as usual. Except this time the black screen with blinking white cursor did not turn into the windows 7 home screen as it usually does. Instead black screen with blinking white cursor and the HDD activity light stopped blinking. I called Samsung and they tried to trouble shoot me through F8 safemode. But safemood not responsive. F4 recovery also not responsive. Only responsive option was F2 into BIOS. Being that this is a 1.5 year old computer, I am certain the windows update killed my machine. Any ideas on what happened here??

Thank you! [PT: January 2012]

@Sharif: The F4 recovery is “outside of Windows” so that feature not working makes me think it could just be a coincidence. But your recovery partition could have been messed up for a long time and you wouldn’t have known, so that’s not necessarily true. Chances are the updates damaged something and it just so happens that the recovery partition is also damaged and now useless. I’d run a Startup Repair which you can do from a Windows 7 Setup DVD (yours or a friend’s) or a System Repair Disc, which you can create from any working Windows 7 computer in the world. [PT: January 2012]

I have an HP Pavillion Elite i5, this update completely crashed my system. I freaked out. Blue screen and all. I had to system restore to before the update and now it seems stable… Worst update ever. I have NEVER had problems like this with a windows update before… Lost a whole day of work trying to figure out the problem.

Solution:
-System restore to before the update
-Disable automatic updates
-…wait until Microsoft gets their act together before installing again [PT: January 2012]

This has seriously affected operation of my Gateway ID59C, Win 7 64 bit Home premium. HTTP is almost completely cut off, but RDP and SMTP still go through. Hard to diagnose, still working on it. [PT: January 2012]

@Sarah: I’m not looking at the update list right now, but I think there was at least one security update that affected some core communication protocols, so maybe that’s the one to look more closely at for your issue. Did you ever get this corrected? [PT: January 2012]

I tried installing the ONE update last night, Dell computer, and it wouldn’t take for hours. I shut off the computer, when trying to boot it up again it says, System resources not sufficient for ACI. I have had this problem before after Windows Updates. What can I do? [PT: January 2012]

@Mary: Was that the exact error message? If you can transcribe it exactly and let me know, we might be able to figure out what’s causing that. [PT: January 2012]

My husbands Toshiba did updates yesterday after the restart black screen, nothing else. [PT: January 2012]

My new Toshiba Win7-64 started a shut-down several hours ago and is still updating 3 of 6 with HDD activity. SHould I shut off or wait it out??? [PT: January 2012]

@JT: Obviously that’s far, far too long. Is the HDD activity regular or irregular? If they’re short, regular pulses, then I’d consider it locked up. If it really does look like it’s “doing” something, maybe wait a bit longer. But I don’t know if I’d even do that.

When the updates started, Windows created a restore point (or it should have), so you should be able to do a hard reset and then do a System Restore. [PT: January 2012]

Same here, dead laptop after the January updates. First it wouldn’t shut down, just kept coming back to the normal desktop. Then after a hard reset (long press on the power button) it comes back up to a ‘PQER’ recovery partition that will blank the PC if I use it.

I’ll have a poke around the disk on another PC and see if I can get anything back but I’m not hopeful.

If I do have to rebuild it, it’s Linux Mint for me…

[PT: January 2012]

@PC Paul: Read both of your comments. Yea, that seems a bit different. I suppose the long reset alone could have corrupted the MBR, but it’s not like you had another option. [PT: January 2012]

After installing this update, My Documents shortcut was pointed to a TEMP folder, I lost all of my Favorites and Bookmarks, my Desktop reset to the windows default, and several of my installed programs no longer work.

At least it did not delete my documents from the PC, but re-installing all of the non working prog’s and rebuilding my Bookmarks and Favorites is going to take some time.

Anyone ever try using a custom start page instead of using bookmarks? [PT: January 2012]

@Big Sumo: Sounds like the update(s) corrupted your user profile. I’ve seen that seem to happen before. A reboot and re-login sometimes clears that up. Not sure if you tried that. As far as the custom start page – do you mean like a Netvibes or iGoogle kind of thing? [PT: January 2012]

Server 2008 rebooted after updates at 3am morning of 12/1/2012 and came back with date of 11/1/2012. [PT: January 2012]

@pmc777: Well that’s a new one. I’ve never heard of an update of any kind altering a computer’s time. Might want to check on that CMOS battery just in case. Weird. [PT: January 2012]

Updates are good for you laptop and computer and can help little word of warning make sure you back it up first. There is nothing worse than when your computer dosn’t boot because its in a loop and the update put it in a permanent update happened a while back with one of my computers. [PT: January 2012]

Automatic update 3 of 7 hung up…has stuck at ‘installing’ for 3 hours before I gave up on it. Vaio laptop running Windows 7, 64 bit. [PT: January 2012]

After jan 2012 updates, my Canon prints out nothing but streaks! Canon tools says everything is ok, but it sure is busted! [PT: January 2012]

@gr: Did you ever get this fixed? Something tells me that’s a coincidence, but with all the bad Windows Update news, I’d believe anything right now. [PT: January 2012]

I’m also having massive problems after this update. My laptop has basically stopped responding to anything. No programs will open, takes a full 5 minutes to open task manager, 3 minutes just for the start menu, wont shut down fully(just continues displaying either black screen with pointer or “shutting down” with circling indicator).

When I first booted after the patch my mouse wouldn’t click on anything. It would move, but I couldn’t interact. That problem seems to have passed though.

If you guys have a fix for this I NEED it soon. I can’t access any of my school work right now and I have an assignment due tomorrow. I’m going to keep fiddling and seeing if I can get something going, but this is insane…

Mine isn’t an HP, btw it’s a Toshiba s5150 [PT: January 2012]

Update has dropped 3 XP machines off network, only re-establish on a power cycle. [PT: January 2012]

Its like a big rerun on my Dell E521——”please dont turn off computer………
Same thing evertime I reboot,over and over..

From what I gather I have 2 updates that did not install correctly and are hanging.Windows update freezes up.I cannot do a thing there—-I cannot remove programs.I cannot even get to system restore!
Give me a fix! [PT: January 2012]

This update is a complete mess. It takes forever to install the 3rd out of 6 updates and then refuses to start the computer on reboot. System restore is the only way back in then it just wants to install the update all over again.

When is Microsoft going to fix it or release a statement.

“Due to our crap QA we regret to inform you that the latest update may cause your pc to be completely unresponsive”. [PT: January 2012]

Its killed my HP laptop as well, it starts up easily enough but after about 30 seconds, everything slows to a crawl before it smply stops and switches to a black screen. Windows 7.

Time to reinstall my OS and disable auto updates I guess. [PT: January 2012]

Well, I got mine booting again – the partition table/MBR had been messed up.

After trying several tools I used DiskGenius from Hirens Boot CD (which is excellent) to rebuild a new partition table and MBR based on searching the disc, and now it boots up fine.

My issue doesn’t sound quite the same as most peoples though…

another comment regards to #171
I HAVE VISTA ON A DELL 521E

I got 6 windows updates that failed to install – Error Codes 800706BE-Code 800706BA-Code 80246005——– from updates dated January 11 and January 13 2012. I had 4 updates that were successful Jan.11.

This my problem:

I go to start up computer , first thing I see , “configuring 1 of 3 ” 0% complete, jumps to 3 of 3 -0% complete.

Then I get my log in.Things are messed up,security essential unable update or scan-PROBABLY DUE TO SOME OF THE UPDATES—-Windows Update will not let me cahnfe from automatic updates to let me choose the ones I want, it freezes up.

I AM ABLE TO GET On LINE

I have went to safe mode-then to system restore 4 times( restore points were way beyond when the problem started) with the same results———Windows update shows up every time the same-hung up showing downloading updates 5%complete .

I have been working at his problem for HOURS. i AM NO COMPUTER WHIZ SO i NEED SOME HELP.

System restore was no help………as far as I am concerned Microsoft sent a viris in a an update THAT HAS SCREWED MINE AND OTHERS COMPUTERS! [PT: January 2012]

Updates made my computer go blue screen but luckily Windows 7 managed to repair the damage itself. [PT: January 2012]

My computer actually crashed after installing the update, but I really didn’t think it was connected until reading all this. I was actually using the computer when it automatically rebooted on me after installing updates. After the reboot, the computer was stuck on the BIOS splash screen for good. Wouldn’t move past it.

I tried to go into the BIOS options, but it took me to a loading screen that I hadn’t seen before, and stayed there. I manually rebooted the system, and now I can’t even get to the BIOS screen. The motherboard just spits out all kinds of errors on its mini LED screen (it’s an ASRock P67 Extreme4 Gen3). Can’t get to BIOS, can’t boot from DVD drive, can’t do anything. [PT: January 2012]

@Patrick Powers: I doubt your problem is related to the updates, aside from the fact that it caused your computer to reboot and this was the time it decided to die. Windows has no real reach beyond the hard drive and your computer is stuck at a point before the hard drive is even accessed. I’d, for the moment, forget about the update and instead look at your motherboard manual for help on what to do based on the motherboard’s LED display. [PT: January 2012]

Same issue as @Sharif above “the black screen with blinking white cursor appeared as usual. Except this time the black screen with blinking white cursor did not turn into the windows 7 home screen as it usually does. Instead black screen with blinking white cursor and the HDD activity light stopped blinking.”

After initial update restart, and now anytime my computer boots up from either a restart or complete shutdown, I get a black screen with the white _ cursor at the top left. It doesn’t blink, just frozen. Can’t F2 or anything – nothing works. Fan inside computer engages for a second when first starting up then stops. I hit the power button and its an instant shutdown down without needing to hold the button. When I click my power button again, the computer will usually start as it should (takes 2-4 attempts most times before it works). But obviously not how it should work. Should I restore my computer to my last back up?

Not sure if this is a software or hardware issue. Using a brand new (and I mean less than a month old) Alienware laptop. Has a 256GB solid state hard drive as well which is my first, so I’m less familiar with their reliability. My guess after reading this post is its the update, but want to confirm its not my hardware before I sit on hold with Dell for hours. [PT: January 2012]

@A Oliver: I’d guess this is hardware related if you’re having any sort of power-on issue from a power-off state. Windows has nothing to do with that. [PT: January 2012]

I have Windows 7 with IE8 and the latest updates have caused several problems. The IE8 back and forth keys will no longer work and the shift+reload key will no longer work to refresh the page. This update needs to be fixed PRONTO. [PT: January 2012]

I have the exact same issue as everyone else. I have an HP m8130f, and it was totally up-to-date with Windows drivers and everything. Well, I installed the most recent update (i.e., WIndows installed the update), and it now only boots in this order: the starting windows icon, waits a bit, then goes to a black screen with a white mouse that moves but nothing else happens. The logon screen never comes up, and I think the hard drive is still flashing occasionally but nothing happens. No CNTRL-ALT-DELETE: nothing.

I tried everything like F8, Safe Mode, Windows Disk with trying all of the fixes, etc. It still goes into that state. I can’t get Windows back. Even the System Restore doesn’t work now, it says that the system restore is corrupted.

Okay, thankfully, I have an Acronis backup from Jan. 1st. Well, it will restore the system perfectly, but it will go into the same state as above.

Get this, even, I have an Acronis backup from 12-1-2011. Okay, I installed that, and it works perfect. But, then, stupid me: I left the Windows update feature on. And, poof, just now, it went back into the same state as above. No error messages, nothing: just disappears into the BSOD (BLACK Screen of Death).

I don’t understand. I have never had a problem like this with Windows. Crazy.

And, I’m no dummy. I do this for a living, so it is not something I did wrong. Windows Update is screwing-up machines and turning alot of them into expensive bricks.

Thanks for letting me have my say,
David Blaine Fullerton [PT: January 2012]

Let me say something else. I removed everything in my system. I dropped the video card, peripheral cards, etc. It is just a pure empty system. I’m even using the video card on-board, and it still does this.

It is not the computer. It is the Windows Update from around 1-12-2012 (I think).

Rebooted again, and I am still in that freaking black screen, white cursor, and nothing else.

I hope someone posts something that helps. I didn’t lose anything other than my time and my sanity.

Hope this helps other people, thanks,
David Blaine Fullerton [PT: January 2012]

I went to Microsoft website and read this:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/why-is-my-screen-black-when-i-start-windows-7

I already did these steps. Even low-resolution still gives me the same black screen white cursor, but with a bigger cursor and that’s it.

It never goes back to Windows 7 Professional.

This is crazy. I hope someone figures a quick fix out of this. Nothing seems to work that I can figure out. [PT: January 2012]

I am running Windows 7 on a custom Asus tower, less than a year old.

When I turned my computer on last night, I was greeted with my wallpaper in the wrong resolution, no desktop, no taskbar, nothing. When I pressed ctrl+alt+del, the screen went black. I couldn’t even access the task manager. I couldn’t right-click. My computer was essentially dead, but the graphic of my wallpaper still showed. A few hard resets later with the exact same results, I opened up Windows in Safe Mode. I noticed that a Microsoft update had taken place at 4:30pm the same day. I tried to restore the computer to a time before the update, but my computer is still screwed up. Even the System Restore said there was an error and it wouldn’t restore. I cannot access anything on my PC.

This is all so upsetting. Microsoft has potentially destroyed all of our computers and I demand an explanation and a fix. [PT: January 2012]

@Victoria: Have you tried a Windows 7 Startup Repair? [PT: January 2012]

I HAVE COMMENTS #171 & 175

Updates made on my computer are still STUCK ON STUPID.GOING ON OVER A WEEK NOW.

Microsoft support is suppose to help me via email today.

They sent me a diagnostic tool that would not load-I think was blocked by Security Essentials or Windows Defender-Neither of these I can change settings -same with Windows Update, I cannot change automatic update settings or delete updates. It just freezes .

Oh, Microsofts Mr.FIXIT did help either!

MY COMPUTER IS STILL A MESS…….THANKS mICROSOFT!

I have MOST recent UPDATE check dated 12/29/2011 and have updates that failed a few installed dated Jan 11&13 2012.Weird.

i UNPLUGGED printer,delEted files ,pictures.Nothing on here. I do not play games with this computer. All I do is get on the internet to safe places and email friends. I do not open attachments…….

I have no virisis except for WHATEVER MICROSOFT UPDATES SENT.

Thank You for letting me blow off steam………….This computer ran great with no problem before the UPDATE!

If Microsoft helps me I will let you know.. [PT: January 2012]

@chris: Any word from Microsoft? [PT: January 2012]

This update caused stability issues at first on Sat 14th after it was installed automatically on the 13th. I am on the road and did not even know I had installed it until my computer crashed on Sunday the 15th. Then looking thru the system restores I noticed it was installed. Tried repairs for 5 hours to no avail until I got a command prompt allowing a chkdsk/ R repair that seemed to restore every functionality. I backed up to flash drives newest files I knew were not on my external hard drives at home then started working again. 3 hours later it crashed again and now basically stuck with the BSOD. I don’t have any disks since on the road any fixes anyone. I always back up before windows updates at home because of the SP1 fiasco a year ago but on the road here with work to do this is crippling. any help besides complete rebuild. Microsoft as usual refuses to provide support.

Sony VAIO laptop.
windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Installed over Windows Vista [PT: January 2012]

I have a friends pc that is still running the 7 updates after 18 hrs what can I do? It sounds like from the above comments that I may well get the bsod anyway so should I just hold the power button down for 5 secs and if the worst has happened try for a restore point? [PT: January 2012]

@Sue: That’s what I’d do. There should be no problem assuming a restore point was made at the beginning of the updates and that System Restore is working on the computer. In most cases both are true. [PT: January 2012]

i have a hp pavillion dv6 64 bit and its my only pc right now. afraid to try installing windows 9. . . Shouldnt i be ? [PT: January 2012]

@bigtimber: Do you mean Internet Explorer 9? There’s no reason to fear installing it. Are there any other updates listed in Windows Update that will installing at this same time? If so, you might want to hold off on them and do them individually. [PT: January 2012]

TIM:

MS sent me a diagnostics tool to send information back to them-It did not work.
The window would not open the tool computer froze up–I guess that was there idea of help.

——–everytime this happens I have to power off-reboot ….same ole thing -configure updates that are loading…..then I get to my computer to sign in——–goes to step 1of 3 updates configuring.sign in again then I can get to internet-how weird…
The icon for updates stays at 5% downloaded all the time.I cannot change settings in windows update from automatic to choose updates to install-it freezes…
I have a Dell521e with Vista Basics
I Have Security ESSENTIALS THAT IS NOW A MESS.I cannot unintall that.

not sure what to do next? reinstall Vista from dvd
Ive never reinstalled a system before.

I had a great computer before the 9 updates. [PT: January 2012]

Another thing Tim-system restore did not work either——went way back beyond updates .It came back the same way. [PT: January 2012]

Problem solved!!!! Mine was staying in boot mode, asus motherboard cpu error led was staying lite. I booted from my system restore cd and started the repair. do a system restore to anytime before the update… in my opinion it doesnt hurt to go back a few periods. If you dont have a re-installment disc you can try to boot into safe mode if the computer is crippled to badly. While your computer starts to boot hold F8.. this should enter the safe mode option. one you load into window safe mode go to control panel and look for the system restore icon. really hopes this helps [PT: January 2012]

@zack thanks for the advice.

The problem I’m having is that the system starts booting and then shows “preparing to configure windows Do not turn off your computer” and then restarts. I tried the safe mode but it was no joy. The same problem.

Unfortunately I do not create a restore disk. Any idea how to fix this? [PT: January 2012]

Count me in on the latest update problems. Specifically the one about the machine staying on the “updating x of x” for an unusual amount of time. In my case, around six hours. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to read through this post and comments before attempting to even do a hard reset. That meant that I still had a chance to boot using the last known good configuration. (you only have the single chance for this option, otherwise, you are screwed). Well, I got into a fully functioning windows screen and went to see what it was trying to update. I found the following three updates, which may or may not be the culprit here: KB2656351, KB2468871, and KB2533523. All of these are related to MS .Net Framework 4. One is marked as a security update, the other two are just listed as important.

I remembered my training and relied on experience, and am going to try updating one at a time while unchecking the others. One last thing to note is that I installed the .Net Framework 4 just prior to these updates and had rebooted, so my problem is most decidedly one of these. [PT: January 2012]

Question for anyone that might know…
Is there any known issues with installing pending microsoft updates and then leaving the system sitting in the “Need to reboot” stage for a long period of time? The OS in question ranges from Win7 32bit 64bit and 2008 Server 64bit. [PT: January 2012]

i installed these updates last week and it killed my pc, i managed to restore but still had problems after , so i killed the os and started again. reinstalled win7 ultimate i would get as far as the swirling ball on load then system would shut down. starup repair starts to load then system reboots, basically ive got a metal brick now. any ideas [PT: January 2012]

After this update my computer restarted and wouldn’t boot up. It’s stuck on the (reboot select boot dvice) and nothing I do seems to work. Computer didn’t come with a recovery cd. I backed it up with a external hard drive but that doesn’t seem to be working. I’ve only this computer for a couple weeks. [PT: January 2012]

Ever since tuesday update, my laptop won’t boot up. Very frustrating. Started out by slowing down, delays in loading, then Thursday , BOOM, after a restart, it will only boot up in safe mode. Can’t get it to work at all, and I really don’t want to take it back to Best Buy so they can have it for a week and I have wait for them. The one time I got it to come up in normal mode, I got a message on screen that said Windows 7 build 7601 not genuine. Now what? [PT: January 2012]

This update killed my ASUS laptop. I had the BSOD and had to go into system recovery and restore to a previous point in time to boot up again. [PT: January 2012]

I wonder if Phaldor (#198) might be on to something, I too have experienced the “Installing updates…” message on every shutdown for the past few days, although I don’t appear to have suffered the way other people have – no BSOD, no failure to boot, etc – and eventually Windows does indeed shut down. I’m using Windows 7 on an HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook, incidentally – I notice several HP dv6 users have reported problems.

The only thing I have installed recently of any significance (apart from AV updates, etc.) is Microsoft’s C# 2010 Express Edition, which presumably includes the latest .NET Framework. Come to think of it, I have had that “Installing updates…” message on every shutdown since, although after the first shutdown since that C# install (when naturally there were several updates to be installed) there has only been “1 of 1″ update to be installed every time.

Why I think Phaldor (#198) might be on to something is that, on the strength of the comments in this forum, I went into Windows Update and set it to manual mode; however, of 5 Important and 3 Optional updates listed as downloaded and recommended for installation, the only one actively ticked by Windows itself – presumably the one it keeps trying to install on shutdown – is the Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (KB2656351).

As I said, my only current problem is one of annoyance at having to wait for a shutdown – I havem’t (yet!) experienced anything like the problems that others have.

Does anyone know when MS’s .NET Framework 4 was first released, or when updates for it (particularly KB2656351) started being issued, and if so does that tally in anyway with when people started reporting these sorts of problems? [PT: January 2012]

Whatever auto updates occurred in the last couple weeks have made my life a living hell. I dual boot OS’ (Win XP 32 on one drive, Win 7 64-bit on the other), and have had zero problems until an automatic update. Now either OS will not boot past the logo screen. Just get the blackness that stays forever. Sometimes if I’m lucky and reboot the machine several times it will eventually load the OS. Have run check disks, malware, re-updated, startup repair (which failed due to “a patch preventing Windows from starting…”), and a billion other things. Nothing seems to work. Started replacing components on my PC to see if there was a culprit, but the fact that everything was fine until this update really has me suspect about it being hardware-related.

Has anyone figured anything out? It’s been about two weeks since the initial crap-causing update, so I’m curious if anyone’s had any luck. I edit films on this machine, so I’m going to be extremely upset if I have to lose time in re-associating all of my files with software due to a clean OS install. [PT: January 2012]

I have the same issue on a custom built PC running Windows 7 Home 64 bit. Only had issue since the latest Security update, computer booted into Windows but then a black screen and a white mouse cursor, nothing else worked. Booted to Safe Mode and used System Restore and this worked then could log in normally. Then the Windows Update tool runs again and on reboot the pc gets stuck on the login screen with the configuring updates message. So for now I boot to safe mode and that cancels the update, then I need to turn off the auto update it would seem to prevent the issue occurring. I am not at home so cannot verify the KB# of the update causing issues, but I can confirm it is just that one update. I will post here again with confirmation. I will also note I have an SSD as my boot drive so update installs are usually very fast. [PT: January 2012]

1st time poster long term reader
Totally agree with all the comments
re this cursed update.
1st the box slows & you think hmmm
I really must run some tests to
see what’s a miss.
BSOD x many = annoying (very)
Re-imaged drive
I didn’t update at all.
And for now its running not 100%
But compared to how it was…..
Good luck all.
Peace [PT: January 2012]

PC = piece of crap. I’ll stick to MAC. Much easier to troubleshoot.

I tried to fix my friend’s HP (here we go again!) G60-120S. It already had a BSOD, he said it happened after updates but he doesn’t remember which. I plugget it to an eternal monitpr andchose a random restore point. Bingo! But then when I ran updates, it went back to the dark side. My mistake was to select all the new security updates at once, instead of one by one. So here I am again going back to restore. What a pain in the brain. I am really glad I personally go with mac and I hope that they will never f… up. [PT: January 2012]

After downloading the updates my computer totally freaked out. It kept crashing and couldnt do anything really. I uninstalled all the updates I did then restarted and my computer is back to normal. The problem is, I dont know which update it was that messed it up so bad. So I’m just going to wait until I hear that somethings been fixed. [PT: January 2012]

MY UPDATE PROBLEM—————–Wll after trying to fix my unfixable computer———-I gave up and after $150 fee for fixing my perfectly good computer before MS updates ,the problem was the files were all screwed up-Needed a reintall-priceless. My next pc is also going to be a MAC.

Advice given to me was to change the way updates are downladed. I am OWNLOADING UPDATES BUT LET ME CHOOSE WHETHER TO INSTALL THEM

i INTALL THEM 1 AT A TIME. [PT: January 2012]

My computer installed the updates while I was away from it for a day. I come back and its not working. THANKS alot. silly updates never actually HELP. [PT: January 2012]

After installing all the Feb 2012 updates on my 64 bit Vista box, the Windows Sidebar crashed and could not be restarted! More seriously, McAfee Security Suite repeatedly crashed as well. System Restore got me back to a normally functional computer.

This is the first time in ages I’ve had a problem with Windows Updates. [PT: February 2012]

Installed them yesterday on a LG XNOTe Windows 7 and as some have already mentioned here I cant use any of my browsers (explorer + Chrome). Uninstalled updates, no joy so restored to a week ago and briefly a little window popped up as it shut down saying there was ‘a problem with uninstall’ which I presume referred to the update removal. Still no luck and i have restored to a month ago now, disabled firewall, AVG and run them in safe mode, there is a connection and its strong just no program will connect in anyway, any ideas? I really dont want to reboot the damn thing. [PT: February 2012]

The latest updates crashed 2 of my computers! System restore got me back up and running. No more automatic updates. [PT: February 2012]

Hi, I have a Dell Latitude D830. Windows 7 Enterprise 32bit SP1. After the latest Windows updates, my desktop changed to solid black (all icons ok and working) and my Internet Explorer start page changed to blank page. I have not noticed any other problems so far. I fixed this by using system restore, but the day after, the updates where installed again and same thing happened. Will try to install one update at a time and se what happens. [PT: February 2012]

Crashed my computer! Was barely able to restore it. Do NOT install these updates! [PT: February 2012]

Since I updated yesterday.. Everything has been fine HOWEVER, this update has uninstalled my network controller adapter & drivers. I try re-installing the adapter/drivers for it, however tit just won’t do it. System restored twice now with no effect. Thanks Windows <3 [PT: February 2012]

Same problem here. Latest auto windows update killed my computer. Doesn’t boot windows. Restore hasn’t worked yet. Just boots to a flashing underscore in the top left corner and nothing else happens. Vista 64 bit system. These updates are junk! Don’t install them!!! The real question is how to fix it now. Any help appreciated. [PT: February 2012]

My friend has an HP Pavillion – I think it’s called a slimline – he uses Windows 7. Last night he shut down his computer to allow updates and it got to update 10 of 11 then froze. He waited several hours, then turned off his computer. When he restarted, the LED lights came on, but the computer didn’t boot. There is nothing on the screen. He left the computer on all night hoping it would do something, but no. Got any suggestions? [PT: February 2012]

commenting on the last comment there… having had the same trouble with the led lights on but the screen not – i connected it to an external screen and that actually helped with the viewing part. so now i can see what’s on – but it only keeps crashing like people here already explained. tried system restore twice already…. [PT: February 2012]

It seems apparent that Feb ‘12 patch forces my laptop to consume more power – likely from the CPU. The fan is noticeably on longer and at higher velocity. [PT: February 2012]

Feb 2012 windows updates installed without crahing but now I have no sound in windows media player 11. I downloaded new codecs at cnet but did not fix me. More to fix again – UGH! [PT: February 2012]

Same thing happened to me updating Win Vista 32bit. PC rebooted to finish applying updates and when it got to where it normally shows screen “3 of 3,” I got a blank, black screen. Had to run recovery twice to restore to a point right before the updates. Waiting to see if MS addresses this issue before trying this again. [PT: February 2012]

My plain xp machine was under automatic updates and this morning realized its crashed right after updates. Blue screen was welcoming me. I alreadystopped all auto updates on all servers long time ago because updates now can be considered legal attack to our systems. Hacking or virusses cannot demage the system like that.. Thanks MS. [PT: February 2012]

WinXP System froze after restart, hung up on hp printer software,killed processes and system continued to load. [PT: February 2012]

Updates have frozen an HP/Win7 netbook!

I will have to pull the battery and use System Restore I think, its been hours and no progress on the install. [PT: February 2012]

We have installed updates for Windows 7 64 bit machines last night, and both machines experienced severe problems with one looking like being completely dead. Updates worked fine on 32 bit machines. Both 64 bit machines are HP laptops, one of them, the older one does not boot at all and we cannot proceed with the recovery as none of the usual buttons for recovery F8 etc don’t work. [PT: February 2012]

Was able to apply the updates, but now machine takes a little longer to boot up (anywhere from 5-10 additional seconds with a blank, black screen before login displays) than before updates. [PT: February 2012]

I have HP laptop. Win 7 Pro 64.
When shutting down, updates started, even though I had checked for updates before logging out.

Waited 2 Hrs 15 Min for 11 updates before going to sleep.
Does anyone know what these updates are for?

It seems I spend more time unable to use my (slow response) new laptop because it is always loading updates!!

Now I am afraid my system won’t boot, checking now…..

Wow, updating over 26000 files in my registry now…

5 minutes, now starting up, but says ‘wait configuring windows updates’…

9 minutes, have welcome screen…will attempt login…

Have desktop, but cant do anything…mouse cursor being ignored, as well as touchpad…

Yay! 15 minutes before usable, sucked 50% of fully charged battery.
This OS is screaming fast!

Just fix it. I didn’t buy a computer for YOU to play with.
I need it for WORK. [PT: February 2012]

Started download last night before I went to sleep..woke up this morning stuck on installing update 11 of 12?? Brand new HP Touchpro desktop..only had 1 week!! Win 7 home 64-bit..any suggestions? [PT: February 2012]

I have and hp pavilion g6 with windows 7 and every time I turn on my computer and get to the login screen and type in my password I get a black screen with just my mouse on the screen and i tried system restore but nothing worked any suggestions? [PT: February 2012]

Same as above, Installed updates when I shut it down…when I woke io it would not reboot at all! I have a toshiba with windows 7. Tech support acts like its my laptop and not the updates! I’m so mad, every update make my computer crazy! What will fix this? [PT: February 2012]

I started the Windows7 64 bit Ultimate update at 9pm on the 16th February 2012. (there were 13 updates)

The first update was still going when i went to sleep…

When I left for work this morning around 7.30am the computer had finished the updates and said it was “shutting down”…

So i guess about 10 to 11 hours for the full update. I will check and see if it is finished when i get home from work…. and whether it will restart. If I dont post again you can assume it started fine. [PT: February 2012]

I am also facing the same problem in my HCL laptop from today’s Win 7 Update, System kept stucked installing updates 11 of 12. Never faced any prblm during earlier updates. Still unable to install all updates. At last I have to hold down power button and restart. Any suggestions? [PT: February 2012]

Had same problem with updates. had to restore system. [PT: February 2012]

Two year old HP Pavilion that USED to run like a champ now, since this update, runs slower than SH*T , moved my desktop icons so that some are missing and is causing both Firefox and Chrome (which I usually run simultaneously) as well as my other programs to crash and/or take FOREVER to boot up! I did a systems restore yesterday and it fixed all the problems, I”m doing one today and turning OFF Automatic updates!

THIS NEW UPDATE BITES!!!

Ryuichi [PT: February 2012]

Killing all three of my computers: Acer laptop, Dell laptop, Gateway desktop. Super-pissed. HATE HATE HATE Apple, but thinking of switching anyway. [PT: February 2012]

My two week old Gateway NV57H57U laptop was working fine until 9 updates to Windows 7 downloaded. The next day I could NOT connect it wirelessly, because ALL of it’s settings had been changed to Public network and my home network was blocked.

My old laptop is working fine, & I scanned my new laptop, so I’m convinced like others here that these *critical* updates have changed my settings, and I could NOT find a way to correct them after 2 days of fooling with this.

Is there any solution other than restoring to a previous date? [PT: February 2012]

So, one of our machines is also randomly going black after a recent update batch. It’s a Vista machine, and there are no available restore points despite the machine having created them with each update. No information available on searches that I’ve found so far pertaining to this year at all, either.

The Win7 machine is fine. Can’t be purely the update.

This is kind of a big deal, MS guys, wherever you are. Really let down by this slip-up. Is it a conflict with virus scanners or something? That’s the primary difference between these machines, since OSes seem to not be a factor. Hmmmm. [PT: February 2012]

I have had to do a System Restore 4 days running due to the February 2012 Windows XP updates.

What goes wrong is after the updates are installed the computer boots up just fine. However the second time I try to boot up the computer freezes during bootup and hangs… the only way out of this is to hard stop (off/on button) the computer, then F8 into safe mode and do a System Restore.

I was suspecting conflicts with anti-virus programs myself but am sort of stuck on how to proceed. I may try your suggestion of turning them off during the updates. If that doesn’t work I’ll have to try deleting the programs, doing the updates, then adding them back.

If this is happening on a wide scale Microsoft is going to be pushing people into Mac showrooms like crazy. [PT: February 2012]

crashed my fujitsu laptop running vista home had to use sys restore to get it working. will wait to see if there is any help from microsoft.? [PT: February 2012]

Yesterday Feb 2012 auto updates to my Windows 7 Home Prem x64 SP1. Today could not reboot – Startup Repair noted a patch is preventing system from starting – but I was able to do a Restore. Anyone know yet which patch is the problem? [PT: February 2012]

COMMENTS ON FEBRUARY 2012 PATCH TUESDAY: Reading through the comments on this blog post make it seem like Microsoft is taking down Windows computers as quickly as the worst virus I’ve ever heard of.

However, as common as these problems appear, they represent such a miniscule percentage of Windows users that Microsoft isn’t inclined to look very deeply into the problem, assuming there is a common problem at all and not just a collection of unique issues with the latest several months of updates.

THAT SAID: The only way we’re going to help each other is if we share as much information as possible.

So, going forward, please post, along with your Patch Tuesday caused issue, your computer make and model, your version of Windows (included service pack level if you know it), the name of your antivirus software, and what if anything you’ve done already to try to fix the problem.

For those of you with no ideas whatsoever on what to do, your first step should be starting with Last Known Good Configuration. If that doesn’t work, try System Restore from Safe Mode, choosing a date before the latest Patch Tuesday.

If you can’t get to Safe Mode, try the System Restore via System Recovery Options from your Windows disc (Windows 7 and Vista users only).

Win 7 (feb)is the last download for me, as a group file.
‘07 Gateway [PT: February 2012]

I have no evidence that the problem was caused by using the manual Microsoft Update. But right after after restart, my usual browser (AvantBrowser) was screwed up.

It is based on a IE shell and it has has also a render engine based on FF. All settings were shaken (not stired) and the layout as well. [PT: February 2012]

@Merel 469: That’s odd, but a bit more expected post-update [mis]behavior. It’s these crazy system crashes that get me.

Acer Veriton, two years old. No problem at all with the upgrades.
Kind regards,
Walter

Toshiba satelite, windows 7 home premium, Norton, ive tried system repair-can’t repair, won’t load windows at all in any safe mode, will not start with last good configuration and system restore won’t work

The 2/14/2012 Windows update totally hosed a Toshiba Portege R800 running Win 7 and Norton 360. It also hosed a EePC running XP and Norton.

In both cases, the machines will boot, but are extreeeeemely slow once booted (all but unresponsive). I can get task manager running on the Toshiba and I see that CPUs 1 and 3 are going wild, at very high usage. In Processes, I don’t see anything other than System Idle taking an CPU time and the total memory usage is around 2Gb(!). Screwing around in safe mode, I managed to get the machine to be responsive, but the Wifi vanished and I can’t get it back. I tried system restore and the first thing it did was reinstall the update and clobber the machine all over again
To fix this machine, I will probably have to take it back to “as delivered” and reinstall software and data. I had to do this to a Toshiba Satellite L645 running Win 7 and Norton last fall.

I classify Microsoft updates as a virus. My next laptop will be an Apple.

Lenovo R500 with Microsoft security solution (so no third-party antivirus) – 10 minutes boot time, and in safe mode Windows takes approximately 1 second to boot 1 driver file, like hard drive performance is 1/1000th of what it used to be.

Recovering to previous Windows configuration doesn’t help.

Like many others my (Toshiba laptop-Vista) went crazy!
Manny of the same issues others had. I needed to do a system restore and then went back and added the security updates one at a time. This method worked, but a pain since it required a restart for each.

just bought a new laptop last month , and i installed these updates and my computer slowed down , i set it to restart it loaded up to the sign in screen i signed in and then a black screen , nothing ever loaded from that point. ALT+CTL+DELETE does not work , WIN+L does not work nothing works but a hard shutdown… i guess im going back to bestbuy to see what they can do.

Internet Explorer ultra slow.Constantly freezes in some emails and sites and have to come out and log back in again.Do Windows ever act on the millions of error reports they receive?

tim fisher says….great idea tim. thanks.
Toshiba Satellite Windows 7 ….Webroot Secure Anywhere Complete
Black screen with the cursor. Went crazy hitting buttons and was able to get the repair thing going…but nothing was found. Still have black screen …..hubby did a system restore from safe mode (got there via F8, can only get to safe mode ) and still have the same problem of black screen with cursor.
Going to try tim’s suggestions….i am clueless with this stuff.
I can not believe microsoft is ignoring this problem. Got the toshiba in december 2011. Right now our laptops are useless with this black screen plague….destroyed.
HELLO…MICROSOFT ? CAN YOU HEAR ME TYPING FROM MY HUSBAND’S MAC ????

UPDATE fujitsu laptop,vista home sp2. have installed updates one by one with restart between each one , and every thing seems fine at the moment . fingers crossed hope this helps ? [PT feb 2012]

My Toshiba laptop, Windows 7, Vers 6.1.7601 Service pack 1 build 7601
failed to re-boot after patch install and needed a restore.

it’s a Toshiba Satellite L745 S42110…
just tried to go into safe mode and have “configuring windows updates”.
it was at 67% 12 minutes ago and has been at 100% complete for about five minutes. DONE. Now i have a blue screen with a solid cursor, no taskbar. Only Windows 7 Home Premium logo at the bottom. Login came up for Windows. Logged in and am back to watching the blue circle swirl. BACK TO BLACK after 10 minutes….it’s been 3 mins and i have had an hourglass show up twice….very briefly and the cpu light keeps flashing…..taunting me. When i have tried this before, it is at this point that my webroot pops up and then disappears. That has happened again after staring at a now dark blue screen for 20 mins. going to pull the plug and try again

After two hours on the phone with every tech support I could find Microsoft tech support finally gave up and told me to do a system recovery OR to reinstall the os. Thanks! This makes twice ive had to do a system recovery after a windows update. I’m ready to trash this toshiba because I need a reliable computer…

These updates blue screened my Toshiba laptop running Win 7. Had to system restore, and then update one by one after uninstalling Microsoft Security Essentials. So far so good *crosses fingers* !

Second comment on my toshiba satellite laptop…(first comment directly above this one). turned computer off last night and back on today..it did more updates and keeps shutting down incorrectly…i turned off automatic updating and am uninstalling the updates one by one, but some of them won’t even uninstall. i fear im headed for the second system restore in three days…

Updates were automatically loaded 2/17/12. I am running Windows 7 Home Professional. After the update downloads I lost my audio. Possible connection? Any ideas?
Thanks

This has also caused my Toshiba Satellite to BSOD twice. I also can’t get on facebook anymore via IE only on firefox, now. It looks like I will be uninstalling these updates. Oh – it also has caused my display adapter to crash a couple of times.

What the heck???

I posted few days ago about two HP laptops experiencing serious problems. Both are running on Win7 64 bit. Other machines running on 32 bit systems are fine. We had to do system recovery on one of the machines and the second one had to be taken care of by our IT technician as it was completely dead, would not start at all.

On this note, i can mention that my personal Sony Vaio running on 64 bit system did not experience any problems.

It looks like most of the machines crashing and having serious problems after February updates are HP/Toschiba computers.

Guys, Was anyone able to identify which update precisly causes the problem? It would be very useful to know for everybody to make sure that it is not installed again.
Please post if you know which update causes the problems.
Thanks

Newer Toshiba Laptop, WIN 7(64 bit) It downloaded and installed updates last night, now VERY slow, and IE will either not load or partially load most pages. Son has year old toshiba, same issue. There were about 12 updates, can anyone say which one is doing this?

Hi al, ew to this, so please excuse lack of knowledge. My Acer Aspre running Vista is on auto upgrade. On 18 Feb 12 the laptop downloaded 3 upgrades. Had to try 4 times before laptop started flly. Then, and ever since, the screen will turn into thin lines and the keyboard locks up. I’ve managed toget up and running by repeated starts – auoto fix says can’t solve problem. And still the screen will turn into lines and controls loc. All was fine before last upgrade. Could this be an unpgrade problem?
Onbliged for any comments – even, you are a dimwit!

Sorry about spelling in last post. Using old PC and old keyboard sticky. Have to check every word. Sorry.

Recent update caused Win7 64-bit to crash. After Windows title screen and a moment with the swirling blue circle, the BSOD comes up and the computer reboots. I had to select multiple restore points in Safe Mode to find a functioning version of Win7 (many of the points did not fully load). I have change my update settings to prevent anymore updates. I am using a custom built computer. I’m not sure where the conflict is.

The 2/15/2012 Security Update has crashed my computer. After a fresh install, and after downloading the update the computer stays frozen on the Starting Windows screen. Windows sucks.

Hi,
My Dell Inspiron (Windows 7 Home premium) is running update 12 of 14 since last night (20 Feb 2012). I believe it is due to the Patch on 14th Feb. I have not used my laptop for last week and started it last night only. I have purchased this laptop in November 2011:
Dell Inspiron 15R, Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit, English.
Please let me know what should I do?
Regards,
Gaurav

Hi.
I came across this site hoping to find what might be some possible update issues and lo’n'behold lookie what I find: PROBLEMS! I am typing from a laptop compie because my desktop is down. CRAP. It started close to mid February, my partner did absolutely nothing and she mentioned it just froze on her and wouldn’t shut down. I have moderate computer skills and have been able to repair issues with both my laptop and her desktop in the past BUT nothing this bad. I have ruled out virus. It freezes in every mode you can think of: windows normal startup; all safe mode options; last known configurations and repair is useless; msconfig does nothing except lesson the burden of startup in safe mode. When I manage to get in I have a brief 10 minute window of opportunity to remove files to stick drive so that I can try a full system reboot or restore to its original manufacturers state. I haven’t done that yet because I am so convinced that this is an update issue that has most definitely transfigured the hardware. I have done everything from going over bios settings to system restore points to repair etc etc etc. It’s as though everytime I have it on for about ten minutes it just freezes, doesn’t shut down, and probably silently suggests to me to “suck it, monkey, I ain’t doin’ crap!” As you can see, some humour is appropriate. What’s up and can Microsoft get a heads up because this is ridiculous. I have noticed that the fan doesn’t even kick in — it’s as though something has completely screwed it’s interior guts — I managed to do virus and malware checks on quick scan from two different software systems and nothing found. These two V/M software are very good at picking up anything out of the ordinary in quick scan but like I said, computer won’t stay up and running long enough to perform long term, multiple program running. Blech! Any thoughts?

Hi, again.

@ Tim Fischer concerning comment 243: Sorry. forgot to mention my partners desktop is an HP AMD II (4 x) 620 Quad CORE P6211f.

Everything you mentioned in comment 243 I have done. I now just uninstalled the first five Microsoft Windows updates for 2012. Noticed startup in normal windows was much faster; there was more computer startup sound then usual and found that the fans were operating when they weren’t before. Strange eh. Started to uninstall Net Framework 4 that were installed in January — got to second uninstall and it froze, again. Virus and malware are Microsoft Security Essentials and Malware Bytes. As I have said, I do not think this is a virus. I really think this is an update issue but I am still working on it. The problem I see is how bad has this misconfigured windows to the point the uninstalling may not help. Like I said, I will eventually try a complete system reboot and see what happens. Until then, I am will keep doin’ what I am doin’.

With every MS OS update, my computer malfunctions. With the updates of 2/13/12, my gmail, google calandar, iphone sync, printers and scanner are not functioning properly. I would think that MS would get this right by now. Stop fighting other programs as it will only alienate users and send us running away from MSN and MS OS. I am tired of wasting my time “fixing” and “repairing” my computer after MS updates.