Patch Tuesday May 2012: 7 Updates Correcting 23 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). [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

Acer Veriton, two years old. No problem at all with the upgrades. [PT: February 2012]

@Walter Waes: Thanks for the comment! I’ve yet to encounter a client of mine with an issue from the updates. Obviously there is some common denominator here with the other problems, but it’s not one I’ve been able to identify. [PT: February 2012]

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 [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

@Brad: Thanks for the comments. I find it interesting that things are OK with all the updates installed, but only when installed individually. That lends to the theory that some of these problems may not be actual conflicts with a particular update, but maybe an issue with Windows Update itself. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

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? [PT: February 2012]

@Steven: The automatic error reports that are sent to Microsoft via your Internet connection are used to determine what problems should be patched. Ironic, hu? If you mean “reports” as in folks complaining on blog posts, or even calling in, then no, there’s probably not much done. Just guessing. [PT: February 2012]

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 ???? [PT: February 2012]

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: February 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. [PT: February 2012]

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 [PT: February 2012]

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… [PT: February 2012]

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* ! [PT: February 2012]

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… [PT: February 2012]

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 [PT: February 2012]

@Tom Nicholson: It’s possible. I know you posted this a few weeks back (sorry I’m only now getting to it). Did you ever get this working again? [PT: February 2012]

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??? [PT: February 2012]

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 [PT: February 2012]

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? [PT: February 2012]

@vance: Sorry, I don’t think anyone knows. One would have to individually install each one, rebooting and testing between installs. I’d be happy to do it but I have yet to come across a machine that’s experiencing these problems. I did see another poster that did this but the problems didn’t repeat after the individual installs. Perhaps that was fix enough? Who knows. [PT: February 2012]

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?

Sorry about spelling. Using old PC and old keyboard sticky. Have to check every word. Sorry. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

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 [PT: February 2012]

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? [PT: February 2012]

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’. [PT: February 2012]

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. [PT: February 2012]

@SickofMS: This is the double-edged sword for a company that only makes operating systems. They are forced to deal with every poorly written hardware driver and sloppy software programming the underworld can produce. Apple controls both the hardware and the operating system and much of the software. There’s no fighting because they own it all. Of course that makes Mac OS much [much, much] less flexible than Windows. It’s a trade off – and it may or may not be worth it to you based on what and how you use your computer.

I’ve dealt with hundreds of Windows computers since these Windows Update horror stories have started pouring in and have seen nothing like the problems being reported here. They obviously exist but I don’t really know how widespread they are. [PT: February 2012]

I installed the last windows updates on Feb 14th and i can say I have had slower performance with Chrome being really slow and buggy. Hotmail for me has been lagging and stuttering since the updatesas well [PT: February 2012]

After Feb 2012 windows updates on windows xp sp3
my desktop computer Pentium D 3ghz on a asus board
ran very slow the start up took forever my audio card was not
working anymore a M-audio Delta 1010. After i did a system
restore from before the updates everything came back to
normal. Does somebody know wich update is causing this? [PT: February 2012]

Why don’t ya’ll try installing one update at a time and perhaps there will be a consensus on which one is causing the problem? [PT: February 2012]

I was sitting on my Asus G73JW laptop in the early days of february when i suddenly got a notce that there were 33 very important updates to be downloaded. I check this thing EVERY day so i thought it was a bit wierd and went ahead and downloaded them all. Since then i’ve had one problem appearing after another! I’ve managed to fix most of them ,but the one and most annoying problem of them all is the the continues screen freezes! It is litterarly freezing my entire system for about 3-4 seconds every 50 seconds. And on top of that im getting terrible FPS drops all over the place and going to look to my harddrive, it peaks to 100% usage every other second, even when im not running any program and shut down just about any process i can afford to shut down.

I even formated it to see what the hell was up and when i sat there with the laptop at factory level with no patches or anything, it was running sooooo smoothly with no problems at all and when i then reinstalled all the patches it all cam crashing back onto my lap! [PT: February 2012]

My windows Vista auto updated and pc kept freezing. Restored to 2/18 before update and it worked. Auto updated me again and it kept freezing. Restored to 2/18 and turned off auto update. Do you think MS will fix this “killer update” anytime soon so I can update my pc? [PT: February 2012]

@John Donohue: Is this a single update that’s causing your problem? If so, which one? Or are you referring to the “update” as the bulk of them that are trying to install? In that case, disable automatic updates (still allow download, just not install) and then update them individually yourself. [PT: February 2012]

All of a sudden my HP Deskjet printer says it is not compatible with my Win 7 operating system. I updated drivers (spent all day fooling with this thank you very much Microsoft). A few minutes ago I rolled back two weeks with system restore. My printer works again. Now what? Do I keep the update from installing for a few days to see if this gets repaired? I can’t be the only person with this issue. [PT: February 2012]

@G Bowman: If I were you, I’d install each update individually, testing your printer after each install. I don’t think your particular issue is widespread. If a particular MS update crashed every HP DeskJet printer, MS would fix it and fix it quick. Lots of enterprise users out there with printers on their networks and those big customers would demand it. It’s probably a particular combination of things specific to your (and probably a few other’s) computers. [PT: February 2012]

I just blocked all updates. You can find out how to do it on youtube. [PT: February 2012]

I have a 64bit win7 running on my HP PC and has been running smooth. However, after Feb 26th update, My PC keep crashing (Blue Screen) almost within 20 minutes. I had to restore the PC to backout the update and everything is back to normal. Anyone knows which update may be a causing this issue? [PT: February 2012]

Hi! I am a computer tech from office depot. I stumbled upon this site looking for answers about a computer we’ve beenworking on. It’s an hp pavilion dv6 entertainment running windows 7. It’s been brought to us 4 times in the past week and the sweet little lady has paid us an arm and a leg for services. We check it before she takes it home but once she gets it home it messes up. On boot up it starts a continuous beeping and says We must do a system restore. Always boots fine in safe mode. I think what is happening is once she gets it home and online it is updating and messing up. Thanks to everyone for posting. It really helps determine the problem. I refuse to send her home unsatisfied again!! I will post any fixes I find tomorrow. [PT: February 2012]

I restored my Toshiba satellite L650 yesterday. I shutdown the laptop to allow all necessary updates however it’s been on update 6 out of 95 for the last 5 hrs. Is this normal? [PT: February 2012]

@Zek: No, something has hung. I know I’m five days late responding, so I’m guessing you’ve done something by now with this. Any luck? [PT: February 2012]

Yeah, I’m back. Still problems in compie land. Still working on it. For now, I upgraded all my cooling fans (2) and I must say the only nice thing is the pretty LED light on my case van that makes it all worth it in the end despite freezing. Soooo, I ain’t gonna quit but it is looking more like compatibility issue with updates. You all might want to check Explorer 9. A friend mentioned to me the other day that she updated IE and her laptop did funny crap. Just a thought. I am going to check it tomorrow because IE 9 I believe is an automatic update and I am not sure if IE has been updated on the desktop I am working on. Worse case scenario, reformatting, wiping clean, finito la musico start all over. Also, for those of you not sure how to control automatic updates. Go to your control panel and look for system in performance for XP and I think Vista is the same as well as WIN 7. You can turn them off or control notifications and what updates you want. That’s all. [PT: February 2012]

@Dor: I just read all three of your comments. Sorry I’m just now getting back with you. In your case, I wouldn’t bet all my money on the updates. Maybe some, but not all. Sounds like there might be a hardware issue there. It’s also possible that the update process pushed your computer so hard that you’re experiencing issues that you might not have otherwise. So in that case, yea, blame the updates. Regardless, thanks for all the comments and let us know how the clean install goes if you end up having to do that. [PT: February 2012]

Hi… my girlfriend just called and via team viewer i see her Win 7 Home Premium laptop (Sony VAIO) stuck trying to do a windows update. She says it has been stuck like this for hours and hours…. ‘please do not unplug or power off you machine. Installing update 1 of 1…’. What’s the risk of using the ‘hold power button til the pc shuts off’ to get out of this? i dont see any other way. I didnt try having her ctrl al del yet, i tried it remotely and nothing happened…

thanks for any assistance. [PT: March 2012]

ughhh… after reading some more on other sites i told her to go ahead and shutdown via hold power… it did shut down, but when it came up its right back immediately to the same screen. Note: it does not say configuring or anything, its still ‘installing update 1 of 1′…. [PT: March 2012]

@ElrondHubbard: I would have suggested the same thing. Hours and hours of clocking isn’t likely to just move on and complete normally. If I were you (or her) then I’d restart, boot to the Windows 7 DVD, and do a System Restore. [PT: March 2012]

Both my computers have been “installing” or “configuring” the update for 90 minutes now. Laptop keeps restarting. Desktop installing 3/7 updates. I going to lose my mind. Is this normal? [PT: March 2012]

@Mom: No, not normal. If the update count is increasing, just let it finish up. There may be a reason it’s taking so long (e.g. a previously unknown issue with your computer hardware or Windows installation). However, if it’s not moving and you’re essentially in an endless loop, then it’s probably not going to resolve itself. What version of Windows do you have? [PT: March 2012]

I got a Blue Screen after installing the March 2012 Patch Tuesday Windows Updates for Win 7 x64. This never happened to me before. Microsoft screwed up. [PT: March 2012]

I installed the March 2012 Patch and had all my files on my desktop and in my user folders totally erased

I had to restore back to the point just before the updates installed and Im having to copy all my files folders etc from previous restores back..

Im lucky I was able to recover everything [PT: March 2012]

windows 7 updated last night and now i get a message that windows detected a hard disk problem. what do i do [PT: March 2012]

@Missy: Are you given any options at this point? If everything has stopped moving, feel free to manually restart and see if Windows starts normally. Most likely, Windows has simply identified this problem due to it restarting, not due to any particular update. Assuming the message is accurate (i.e. you really do have a hard drive problem), then you can test for that if you can get back into Windows. Actually, there are several ways to test this even if you can’t access Windows normally again, but we’ll get to that if need be. Feel free to continue this conversation in my PC support forum. The back-and-forth will be easier there and we won’t clutter up the comments in this post. [PT: March 2012]

No issues installing on Windows Home Server 2011. Everything went smoothly and server booted right back up. [PT: March 2012]

@jake: Good to hear! I updated about a half dozen computers, some custom builds, some Dells, all major Windows versions. No problems. [PT: March 2012]

March 14, 2012 7 updates for our computers 3 with Win 7 one with XP
The XP sp3 computer now has a black screen upon booting. The video seemed to be out, with the box running, checked the updates in control panel, they did not install. Reboot in safe mode, system restore to the day before, still nothing. Updated the Nvidia driver still back screen.

Any Ideas before I turf it! would be appreciated [PT: March 2012]

Before the mach 13 2012 – before update
Internet Explorere – Internet Speed Test – 30mb/s

After the update
16mb/s

they put something in windows 7 – 64 bit code, which is making this nonsense……

I have 30mb/s bandwidth and I used to 30 in the meter before, now I get only 17

I check for NewYork

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

If you don’t believe me, make sure you test this before and after….. [PT: March 2012]

@ Tim 297. I am running Vista (not sure which version as I am at work) Both computers ran all night with “configuring update 1 of 3 0%). I tried to shut down and restart in safe mode to do a restore with no luck, keeps going back to the configuring loop. I can’t even restore at this point. I also should say, the computer keeps restarting on its own. [PT: March 2012]

I have a i5 Dell Inspiron after last nights updates there was a huge Aero animation lag when opening any window. When I restored to pre-update it went away so the problem was defiantly from the update. [PT: March 2012]

After windows patch for 3/13/2012, a handful of people in our organization can no longer print to mapped printers. Trying to access the printers on the shared server results in an error. All of our machines are win7 32bit.

Anyone else seeing this happen? Trying to find a resolution. [PT: March 2012]

Every time I shut it down, BSOD and it restarts. My antivirus thought parts of the update was a virus and shut down the rest of the fire wall and actual viruses are now on and I cant shut it down…I have a dell laptop btw [PT: March 2012]

My Windows 7 desktop is stuck in an infinite loop while rebooting after the update installation. Cannot do a system restore to any earlier points, and none of the other repair options work either. Startup repair reports it can do nothing due to a system configuration change. I’ve got nothing but a frozen “Starting Windows” screen and nonstop hard drive activity on a desktop running perfectly fine until now. Any suggestions? [PT: March 2012]

I downloaded the March 2012 update and restarted my computer. Now my CPU is working overtime for no reason. With zero running apps, the system usage averages about 80 percent and CPU heats up really quickly. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a fix? [PT: March 2012]

My laptop computer is only two months old, when I got the new laptop when I turned it on it would get stuck on “please wait” when loading windows. I got the fix, worked fine, computer updated and installed this update and I get the screen stuck on “please wait” again, wtf? So the patch unfixed my fix? Seems like its the same thing with all updates, they make my windows 7 worse off than it was before. [PT: March 2012]

I lost audio [PT: March 2012]

My windows 7 update is sitting on 1 of 8 for now 8 hours, can the update be killed or how do I get my PC back. I have restarted it but when done it goes right back to the screen update in progress update 1 of 8. I cannot start in safe mode it seems like I am completley stuck. HELP. [PT: March 2012]

For the second month running after installing the updates my pc refuses to start and I have to go back to system restore. This is getting ridiculous! [PT: March 2012]

After that update my computer won’t restart. At all. I got the system up enough (running windows 7) to try a windows repair and it said it needed to use a restore point to repair from. It tried that and then when it finished it wouldn’t boot. Just a black screen, no light on the power button, and the lights on my keyboard flashing in unison with a clicking noise the system is making. I later got the system running long enough to go into the boot order and get the system to boot from disc so that I could put the windows 7 disk in the drive and boot from that. Now it won’t start at all. Sigh. Anyone have any ideas? [PT: March 2012]

I installed the march 2012 update for Windows 7 last night and I don’t know what happened but after it automatically restarted, I didn’t have Firefox, Chrome and Safari anymore and all my favorites, cookies, etc… disappeared, as if I just installed IE.
My background picture was removed and the appearance settings too…
This morning I wanted to restart my pc again, and it didn’t work.
Fortunately I could restore it and I am back just before the update.
Are these problems gonna be fixed soon?
This is the first time it happens to me in 2 years. Hope it will be the last! [PT: March 2012]

Shut down computer this morning because printer wasn’t working started doing updates and now has bee stuck on 4 of 8 for over an hour!

I’ve never seen an update take so long..

I’m running win7pro/64bit on a home build Amd quad4 I. Guess that’s the specs. [PT: March 2012]

win 7 64b home premium
MSI elite black series MOBO
Phenom II x4
4gb ram
2x HD4890 in crossfire
Update ran, on restart, graphics driver corrupted, 10+ minute boot times, timezones changed, extemely slow response to anything, most programs take 5+ minutes to launch, LAN take 5+ minutes after boot to recognize the connection, but less than 2gig of RAM is used, system sitting right around 94% system idle,
Restore point for 3/13/12 has no effect, last restore point before from 3/10/12 has no effect, had to disable Norton to get to 3/10/12.
reinstalled catalyst graphics driver and packs, 1 GPU works, won’t recognize the other to get back to crossfire, system is still terribly slow while still showing 94% availability… Core 4 seems to be doing most of the work.
Ran my backup to my NAS overnight, reinstalled from the DVD this AM, allowing the new patches to download in the install.
I will try installing the GPU drivers first thing tonight, if I can’t get back to Crossfire I will wipe again and not allow the OS to update on install.
I sure would like to know my system was patched properly and up to date, I don’t know much about the vulnerabilities.
That is as detailed a problem description as I can give, I hope it is of some use in problem determination.
In vague terms since I don’t know programing, it looks like the kernel is having issues after the patch in controlling the hardware, like the chipsets on the board controlling GPU’s and LAN ports and multi processor CPU’s, and may be why when one of the other posters updated their MOBO BIOS it resolved their issues? [PT: March 2012]

Window updates crashed my computer. It would not startup, the startup repair could not fix it. Also, i could not restore to a previous date. Ultimately, I had to do a factory restore, which deleted all my information, files, etc. WTF. I will never buy another PC as long as I breathe air. I lost WoW. This sucks. [PT: March 2012]

To the victims of the latest march 15th update – Try the following sequence -

1. Shut down the computer abruptly, so that on reboot it asks you to take the “Safe option” (or for more experienced folks, press F8 during boot)

2. Once in the Safe option, please go to Start->Control Panel->User Account Control, and set it to the lowest level. Gently ignore all protests by the system.

3. Reboot, and see if you are able to login.

4. Reinstall completely Norton and any graphics driver from AMD (more so if its a notebook built-in one like Toshiba/Sony tend to have)

To reinstall Norton, please use their remove Norton tool. To reinstall the graphics driver, please download the driver from the Notebook website. For desktop, from AMD website.

Once done, do a complete liveupdate of the system – you may need to do so quite a few times, with an occasional requests for a reboot.

5. Once the last of the liveupdates is done with, please go to Start->Control Panel->User Account Control and restore the UAC to third level.

6. Reboot … (I also did an additional step of praying to whichever Gods the Software writers believed in – but then, perhaps, it was little superfluous …)

7. Hope it works … [PT: March 2012]

Windows XP Pro 64 bit.
After the update I lost my profile. I managed to restore to 12/03/2012, but when it shut down it must have reloaded the patches and I lost my profile again, but still managed to restore to 12/03/2012. AV software, Kaspersky PURE, is corrupt and can’t repair the databases. [PT: March 2012]

To (309) jbrayaacn:

The round of Windows Updates that were released on March 14th broke file-sharing capabilities on three of our Vista machines. On one of them, we can’t even access Windows Firewall or the Security Center. A third-party program (FSS) confirmed that numerous Windows Registry entries were missing.

If anyone has a solution, please let us know. [PT: March 2012]

After march update my 2 windows 7 dell computers cannot log onto secure sites. I was able to install firefox on one so now i use that for secure sites. on the laptop i get a messege saying security settings wont let me download. no matter what i do in settings i cannot fix this, so i downloaded the mozilla setup exe from another rig but to my surprise the laptop will not run the exe file. first time ever having problems with MS updates. [PT: March 2012]

Windows 7 64bit.
Next day after update rebooted on loading Windows. System Repair could not fix “bad patch”.
Restored to an earlier date.
Afraid to update again. Would like to know which one of the 6 updates did it. [PT: March 2012]

latest updates makes my pc crash at windows start up
after doing 5 restore points it finaly starts
nothing to solve here but another note for an crash lol
my pc is an gaming pc (high end )and running win7 64bit professional
so far seems random because laptop doing fine and notebook to
maybe an hick -up in the download will see tomorow

Running Vista. Very bad timing for the time it has taken me to get back my computer back to a usable state. Lost all my bookmarks in IE. No warning–MS $ucks. Last Windows machine I will ever own. [PT: March 2012]

Searched for help on this issue and found all this. So far my Vista machine is okay but my XP is not. The acer monitor is now black after this morning got the bsod, shut down and when turned back on – nothing. I hooked up an old huge gateway monitor to it and was able to see my desktop, and went to do a restore and find this crap of update called AM Service distribution software update (something to that effect) didn’t know what that was till i searched about it from another computer…….UGH! And to top it off the restore would not work… i finally did get it to restore by clicking that update and said restore to just b4 it was installed and I have a feeling it also messed my driver up for the monitor. This is a first for me to have this issue with the updates but you can bet they will no longer be allowed to automatically update, and i don’t think i should now allow it to update drivers for things that don’t belong to it (ie acer). I hope i can get my flatscreen back to working again but boy am i frustrated with this i had other pressing things to be doing today for sure and whilst on a rant I still can’t seem to find out how to make a boot disk or recovery system disks on these computers. I really wish they still included them with the purchases. arrrrrgh [PT: March 2012]

I also had a similar experience with the update. While it was installing Win 7 updates during shut down, it froze at 100%. I had to do a force shutdown. then it wouldn’t boot into normal windows. I had to use safe mode, then restore to get it back to normal. [PT: March 2012]

Thanks Microsoft. I just spent the last 5 hours thinking one of my hard drives was going down. After sneaking back in only after disconnecting the main SSD that is SATA6 (don’t know if that is the issue or not) I was able to get in an uninstall the updates. I checked all the boxes to say to “never” install and what did it do again! Love it. I’m on my second attempt now to uninstall these updates. Thanks. [PT: March 2012]

i downloaded and updated the updates individualy and ended fine
i didnt do anything to solve it beside doing the update one by one
i gues the trubbles where on downloading it or to big updates

pc 4 ghz -6gb ram – nvidia gtx 460 1 gb ram – win7 64 bit professionnel – AVG – zonealarm [PT: March 2012]

I could not start PC after Microsoft update download yesterday, it would re-boot then giving me the blue screen and start over again.
I went to office depot and technician told me I’m already the third person with the same problem that day. Solution would be to do a factory restore for about $150.
Luckily I remembered I had an image backup CD for windows 7, I run it and it worked. [PT: March 2012]

Indications for me following last nights update no internet access though my modem was working and other pc’s on the wireless network were ok. Task bar settings had changed with my anti virus, printer and connection settings not displayed. So I manually restored the internet settings and reset the icons locking the task bar.

Later the same problem re-occurred in addition to the appearance of the hardware removal icon. I am not impressed. Which of the 5 patches is to blame? [PT: March 2012]

I had similar problems – Windows update page indicated some updates downloaded, but did not install. All restore points were lost. I was able to reboot by taking the battery out, and forcing a boot. With patience – several minutes – it finally booted, and everything seems normal. I am backing up everything so I can rebuild the system, but it might just be a problem with the update that has since been fixed. [PT: March 2012]

Everytime I apply these new updates (4 security updates and a NET Framework) My computer freezes on boot-up and goes to BSOD. I get failed to process1_failed_inilatization and the only way out is to restore a day before it got updated. It’s stupid, why make updates that aren’t compatible with ALL computers and not just the ones the developers use, We all have DIFFERENT types of systems y’know!

My system:
Asus P8Z86 Deluxe
Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit)
2x 500GB WD
8GB Kingston DDR3
i7 2600k SandyBridge
Asus 560Ti

I’m going to apply the updates again with my AVG 2011 edition turned off and I’m not going to update the Framework on it because that might be the problem.

If this doesnt work I DEMAND you Microsoft to get on your asses and work this problem out I didnt spend ££££’s on a machine just for it to get ruined by the OS itself. FIX IT [PT: March 2012]

Running Windows 7 Home Premium on a Acer Aspire Z5610. PC downloaded updates March 14th, and thismorning it froze towards the end of startup. Used the emergency turn off and retried, but same thing happened. I started up in safe mode, and did a system restore to March 13th, which has solved the problem for the moment. However, the PC is wanting to install updates, specifically the ones installed on the 14th that seems to be the problem.
I have now changed settings to only install updates when I SAY SO. Maybe if I install in a few weeks it will have been rectified
Anyone else any suggestions? [PT: March 2012]

I have had No problems from the patches, i have XP pro, Vista Home prem, and Win 7 . [PT: March 2012]

anyone got anything about this yet? I still cannot use my acer flat screen it’s still black and i updated the nvidia drivers I guess tomorrow i will try to hook my Acer up to another computer and see if it actually fried – i have never had that happen in all my years on these but i still blame microsoft and their updates – it was fine before that happened and i can still use an old monitor on my machine so that is what is so confusing and frustrating about it as to wth happened to cause my monitor to do this unless it sat there and kept restarting over and over with the updates till it killed it and got the BSOD…..if this other monitor hadn’t of worked then i would suspect some other hardware but it’s working only i hate it cuz it’s huge and i got spoiled with that flat screen. [PT: March 2012]

I’d say thank you very much for your support. But my toshiba L510 sometimes suddenly is like suffered from something. The screen was blue and the massage it s crashed. [PT: March 2012]

First Laptop. I have gone out of my way to really take care of it. I am experiencing the same types of update issues with my TOSHIBA Sat C655 running windows 7. I am wondering if there is something else at play since I know others who have run the update and are not having problems. I am doing a system restore back to March 12. Just noticed that there has been a “Critical Update” multiple times per day since the 14th. Is there something in the update that is conflicting with software, hardware, or an earlier update? I dont like DMX but I have “yall gonna make me lose my mind up in here” on a continuous loop, just like the windows update has been since Friday. Let’s face it, that isnt good for anyone. Any news from Microsoft? (googled a bunch of sites and nothing much really) [PT: March 2012]

My HP Pavilion dv6 has crashed twice in the last two days. The freeze occurs when I plug in my Fast Track Pro (M-Audio) box. If the problem persists I may have to find another way to record. [PT: March 2012]

Computer boots, albeit very slowly, but freezes when it gets to the desktop. I can boot to Safe Mode, but with all the problems people are having with rolling back,

I’m afraid to. I just spent weeks rebuilding this &^%$ing system after accidentally narfing my MBR and reinstalling Windows and don’t want to do it again.

(Win 32 Ultimate, Asus motherboard, AMD dual core, nVidia SLI video) [PT: March 2012]

Incidentally, in my System Restore, I had a patch for the 13th and a patch on the 14th (I’m using Windows 7 Ultimate 32 Bit).

I restored back past the patch on the 14th and things seem to be working now. If you scan for affeted files, the patch on March 14th appears to specifically affect:

(Only listing last five digits)

Hotfix 39308
Security Update 21440
Security Update 41653
Security Update 47518
Security Update 65364
Security Update 67402

I guess something in the patches from the 14th are corrupted.

Hopefully this might help someone else. Use at your own risk.

=B= [PT: March 2012]

Todays ‘critical’ updates wrecked my screen display, installed a yahoo toolbar that I can’t get rid of, moved stuff around so that I can’t undo it.Very annoyed with this. Since an updats a while back my web access has been problematic at best. If I had the extra cash I’d be learning how to use a Mac right about now. [PT: March 2012]

i had the critical update installed today on m y Asus machine and things seem to be very screwy now. I cant use my mouse properly, it wont highlight text in IE9, i cant hover over icons in the quick launch bar and see a preview of what the page is…. i guess im going to have to do a restore i bekieve [PT: March 2012]

Upgraded my vista to windows 7 on my MSI laptop. Started upgrading 100 updates… Goy stuck on no. 30 for 6 hours . I wated a further 6 hours.. Turned it off overnight. Now my laptop won’t boot and all I have is a black screen. What do I do now???? [PT: March 2012]

Ever since the updates on the 14th, my computer has become nothing more than an egg timer with a 15min countdown before BSOD. I run a HP Pavillion m8200n with Windows Home Premium 32 bit. I’ve been restarting my computer more in the last few days than I have in the last year. I’ve tried restoring my computer to previous states, however during those states, I’ve had automatic updates turned on, so now, when I boot up, regardless of internet adapter connection, these “corrupted” files are already on my computer, telling me they’ve already been downloaded and are awaiting installation.

I’ve managed to stop them from being re-installed after a restart, but it seems that the BSOD’s persist regardless of them being installed or not. Apparently, just having them downloaded is enough to cause system instability. Restarting is a serious problem as well, as many times after a BSOD, the computer will not make it past the HP Pavillion loading screen, as it will lock up and you will not even be able to access the boot menu or system restore. The only way I’ve found to overcome this is to shut down your computer, and turn off all power to it for roughly 10 minutes, then turn it back on.

Additionally, the crashes seem to be more directly related to times when the computer’s actively using memory, like when trying to play a game or watch a movie, or even when you try to run a check disk before start-up.

I’m expecting another crash here in just a few moments, but figured I’d leave my message stating that THESE UPDATES ARE A VIRUS!! DO NOT DOWNLOAD!! ~ hopefully I’ll be able to rollback to my earliest date and perhaps then I just might not have to completely re-install windows… [PT: March 2012]

Updates locked my computer and left 7 hanging updates the try to install upon shut down but will not install and thus will not shut the computer off. I am on windows 7 and had absolutely no problems until this upday. [PT: March 2012]

Since yesterday internet explorer in quick launch now freezes my pc and has to be unplugged – quick launch tool bar is unusable as it freezes PC. Favourites also does the same… no mouse cursor and all you can do is shut down using CTR: A:LT DEL,

I can open IE only via the start menu now and still finding glitches which freeze PC [PT: March 2012]

On Tuesday March 13th we had AT&T U-verse installed. They are our new ISP. Everything worked great, and we shut down that night. Wednesday morning, turned the pc on and Vista 64bit would not load. Luckily my machine is loaded with a partitioned drive and Ubuntu works fine. Windows says it is corrupt. Will not let me recover. Sure would like to remove whatever MS patched Tuesday to see if the system will reboot. [PT: March 2012]

I just bought a brand new laptop. I’ve had it 3 days it was doing an update this morning that took approx 3 hours and seemed to freeze. Finally when it finished, my laptop shut off. I turned it back on and it goes to a blank desktop with no icons and nothing will come up at all. All I can do is shut it off and turn it back on but it just goes to the same screen, nothing else. I have an HP Pavillion running Windows 7. What the heck am I supposed to do? [PT: March 2012]

Ever since patch Tuesday, March 2012, my computer does this pause thing that is driving me nuts – it takes a 5 to 10 second break every 15 seconds or so. I’ll be typing and suddenly it pauses and nothing is happening. When trying to load programs, there is a 1-2 minute delay before anything happens after clicking on an icon. Microsoft needs to get out a patch for their patch. Just typing these first three sentences, it has paused 5 times and taken me 5 minutes. This is my work computer and I had it running smooth as I could want before this last patch. It is enough to make me cry. My laptop is experiencing the same problems and I use it for power point displays and extensive internet searches. I use anti-malware and anti virus programs frequently and have kept everything clean and up to date. I cannot remember the last time my computer blue screened. But since the Tuesday Patch…..HELP. [PT: March 2012]

F
Crashed my HP dm1 thanks Windows [PT: March 2012]

Jeff,

I was on vacation all last week during the updates. When i turned on my computer Sunday 3/25 1. IE would not open up so i am having to use 64-bit 2. The whole system is running extremely slow. 3. Some programs are lagging big time.

If i restore to March 15th before i left will this cause an issue? or do you have another suggestion? [PT: March 2012]

I left my Acer laptop on last night and woke up to a crashed computer. Updates run at night. Today my desktop is flashing security warnings. My neighbor is reporting her computer is down too. I plan to contact MS to see if any updates came through Tues. 3/27 that may have caused this. [PT: March 2012]

I have a Gateway 8510gz
Windows XP SP3 updated to pre 2012 (forget numbers and cant recover them)
Like everyone here I tried to follow the “Suggested” automatic update because I was tired of seeing the annoying bubble EVERY TIME I turn on the computer. Well, like all of you that annoying bubble was the death of my computer.

I spent a lot of time turning things off and eliminating anoying processes, its been over a month and I didnt log all of the things I removed, sorry.

Still I got the computer to work just fine and could do absolutely anything with it IF I disabled my wireless adaptor. The very instant I turn it back on the HDD goes nutty and completely locks my computer down.
It can take up to 4 minutes for the start menu to rise after clicking on it.

Windows update corrupted the system completely and it has everything to do with internat activity, and trying to get the rest of the information that is needed to fully kill my computer again.

After trying to rollback to 2012/01/17 (the furtherst restore point I had) the problem persists and gives the blue screen stop: 0×000000d1 (0×0000000c, 0×0000005, 0×00000001, 0xb9f935f7)
Driver IRQL not less or equal

So make sure you turn off updates, and never use them. This is the second time an update has lost everything for me, and about the 4th time an update required extensive time figuring out what annoying driver they broke, or what virus software noticed it was a corrupted file leading to the fight of a lifetime between windows “quality” and vvirus program “reality”

The fix is this: Reboot your computer
Sorry but thats what I see and hear, and have to do

Hopefully someone will prove this wrong… (sure as @#$% wont be a microsoft employee) [PT: March 2012]

My wife did updates on both of her laptops, one is an HP DV7 with Win7 Home Premium 64 bit. The other is a Dell XPS L702X also with Win7 Home Premium 64 bit.

She usually uses the Dell and said she felt it was running slow so she did all the updates and that it asked if she wanted to go into a “basic” mode. The Dell will boot to a basic mode, no network support, no sound, and the screen dims. Restore is corrupted and won’t work. Cannot install any programs as all the systems are disabled. Every attempt at restoration crashes or says files are corrupted.

Her HP is in an endless series of reboots. Restore also does not work, you get a general error when it finishes stating it couldn’t finish.

Both latops are not giving specific errors as to what is wrong, all it says is restores could not be finished, trying different fixes online has not worked because both systems will not allow me to do anything.

Kinda funny 2 laptops from 2 different manufacturers…same problem…the only similarity is the fact both are running Win7 Home Premium 64 bit. [PT: March 2012]

i have a nearly new Acer Happy One Netbook with Windos7 Starter, and following the IE( and other big March critical security updates, myine began to freez or “lock up”, especially with any “hot link to graphics, photos, or YouTube, for example
With this computer and WIN7 Starter, there IS NO way to set the date back to a stable time, because it does not create them (snapshots). It also has no backup unless you go buy an accessory drive and do it on your own (I had not yet “got around to it”.
Am I just screwed? [PT: March 2012]

since this patch was released, we’re having trouble tracking our ecommerce revenue on GA for people with IE. anybody else? [PT: March 2012]

Hi tim my problem is my toshiba laptop satellite l350d will not turn on properly, what happens is when i turn it on a box comes on the screen saying this application has requested the runtime to terminte it in an unusual way. Can you give me any information on how i can correct this to get my laptop running again thank you. [PT: March 2012]

The Windows defender crashed my windows 7 64 Home Premium so badly with BSOD that I had to restore from Acronis Backup! [PT: March 2012]

RE: March updates, that is the Windows defender update prevented my Woshiba L665 from restarting Windows 7 ever until I recovered C drive from Acronis, how do I disable that specific update from appearing again

Its lurking in the list, one false tick and Windows goes bye-bye [PT: March 2012]

Hello, after updating windos my pc crashes after booting with a white screen, some times black. I mean wht is the point ofthis loveley updates if they are putiingme offline!! three days triying to fix the problem! Formated did not updateand every thing works a charm. NO More Updates! [PT: March 2012]

All of my computers (Windows XP and Windows 7) could not access my RoadRunner emails after installing these updates. Microsoft has screwed up again and it is serious if you like using Outlook. System restore is the only way to get back to normal. What’s up wiht MS? They are getting really sloppy! [PT: March 2012]

Installed those ugly Windows Updates from February and the Patches from March and they’ve been a pain in the behind.
Date and time was changed on me this morning. Couldn’t access several websites and Windows Update because of it. Worst yet, the screen that allows you to change the time froze. Ended up disabling antivirus, did a system restart the day ‘before’ those March Patches, had many attempts to finally change the date/time, immediately logged on to retrieve the patches again and install them, restarted and turned antivirus back on. Keeping fingers crossed this fixed the issue.
(Yeah, I know it may be the battery as well. Just have to wait and see.) [PT: March 2012]

So the latest updates tonight crashed both my comps. My gaming rig ran the auto updates(I forgot to turn them off last time), but they need admin permissions…I saw Microsoft and figured it was ok. They run and restart after install like expected only comp doesn’t restart. It gets stuck at a black screen with a cursor. No win logo or anything. Have to wait til tomorrow for Microsoft teir 3 response. Teir 1 and 2 were useless for my problem. Can;t even get to safe mode. Pressing F8 only brings up a list of boot devices like you get when doing a fresh install. So i went on my laptop and before i could disable the updates, they started running. and although it could cause issues, i ripped out the battery to stop it. Figured it couldn’t be worse than my other comp. Rebooted in safe mode and stopped the updates so it is fine now, but my gaming rig is screwed. How do they make these errors so often?? [PT: March 2012]

So i purchased an hp pavillion g6 from futureshop just before xmas. It downloaded and installed some updates from microsoft, and rebooted automatically. Now,when i press the power button, it just flashes for a split second, clicks, and nothing. It will continue to do this until i take out the battery.

I dont understand whats happened. Everyone else seems to be able to at least boot theor computer, but mine wont even POST. [PT: March 2012]

@mikey: When you take out the battery and put it back in, does your computer then come on OK? I’m guessing that the patches and the behavior you’re seeing aren’t actually related. It sounds like a coincidence to me. [PT: March 2012]

Truly amazing comments, all these people blaming Microsoft who have added a great back up feature to Windows 7 so you never end up losing your OS, yet people must be turning off the action center warnings. Plus no advice from Tim on the subject to help those less technically minded. [PT: March 2012]

@Mykill: I’m working hard on a firm troubleshooting guide for issues that seemed to be caused by MS security patches but it’s just not ready for prime time yet. And of course, backing up makes life easier if you have to fully restore Windows. Another project in the works. [PT: March 2012]

Did the updates this morning…..waited almost 30 minutes for them to complete. Now my computer will not boot….tries to start but get blue screen with blinking cursor. No keys are functional. [PT: April 2012]

@Joy: No error code or message on the blue screen? [PT: April 2012]

Update number 10 of 11 is taking forever to install today -April 8- is that ‘normal’? [PT: April 2012]

@Anne: No, that’s not normal. I usually wouldn’t wait more than 30 minutes and even that is probably overkill. If it’s still frozen, I’d manually restart. If you’re lucky, it’ll start where it left off and finish properly. If not, your computer will halt (maybe a BSOD, maybe not) in which case you’ll need to do a System Restore. [PT: April 2012]

Installed updates today and now my sound is not working. I can see my music playing, but cannot hear anything. Volume is not on mute or turned down, and was working fine before I installed update. The last update did the same thing and I had to do a system restore. Please help! [PT: April 2012]

@Denise: Any idea which update it was? Have you looked in Device Manager to see if there are any errors on your sound hardware? [PT: April 2012]

The problem appears to be with the Office updates, as I have had no issues with my Dell Vostro except being able to open any macro-enabled Excel spreadsheets (I have not tested Word). Doing a system restore to a time before the updates has resolved my issue. [PT: April 2012]

@Adam: I didn’t see any Excel specific Office related patches come down, though I use exclusively Office 2010, not sure what you’re on. There were several updates with Office 2010 but I think all of them were Outlook related. [PT: April 2012]

I am stuck in a wierd situation here… Last month and this month the Non English security updates are showing as “Patch Not Required” Only English language machines shows the Patch Required. I have downloaded all languages patches like Korean, Japanese, Chinese but none of these patches are required on respective langauge machines. My colleague posted this concern in below URL but its unanswered . Please advice us how to get this working ??

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/configmgrsum/thread/a57bc06d-0f41-4016-98dc-379eb4786c1c/ [PT: April 2012]

I installed the updates on a Vostro yesterday and immediately started suffering BSODs. Three in a row.
During the course of that I managed to uninstall all the .NET updates (left loads of Office updates) and left the machine on overnight with the same apps running as when the BSODs happened. Still fine this morning.

Any known issues with the .NET updates yesterday? [PT: April 2012]

@Nick: I haven’t seen any mention of issues with the .NET updates. Microsoft usually posts some Q&A stuff soon after each Patch Tuesday but if the issue isn’t widespread, there’s usually no mention. I know even outside of Patch Tuesday, I see issues all the time with .NET, usually incorrect, incomplete or corrupted installations. I’d suggest uninstalling or reinstalling .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 4 and then try patching. [PT: April 2012]

Got up this morning 11/4/2012 to a OC that won’t boot following Windows update last night. Any advice appreciated…. [PT: April 2012]

@Tony: Expand on “won’t boot.” Any errors? Where does it stop? [PT: April 2012]

Installing 9 updates on a Lenovo x201 running Windows 7, and 85 minutes later it’s still circling at 67% complete.

Should I shut down the machine and try again? [PT: April 2012]

@Dan: I would probably shut down and try again after 30 minutes and since you posted this several hours ago, I’d certainly restart if it’s still going on. If you’re lucky it’ll just pick back up and continue. If not, you can always boot to the Windows 7 disc and pick your restore point prior to these updates. That should get you back in. Then you can disable automatic installation of updates and go from there. [PT: April 2012]

Installed new updates on my Windows XP machine today (HP), it is fairly old computer at work, never had any issues. Clicked on Restart for updates to take effect and it would not restart. It would get stuck on the black screen right before Windows screen was supposed to pop up. Tried to switch it off and on few times and waited for a good couple of minutes every time to see if anything happens, I was almost sure that updates killed my machine and eventually my computer started on the third try. After that, no problems. [PT: April 2012]

My computer automatically went to install 11 updates and has been stuck on 4 of 11 for over 12 hours. It says not to forcefully shut down so I’m kind of stuck. What should I do? [PT: April 2012]

@Gerard: See my comments to some others in a similar situation. Basically: hold your breath and restart. [PT: April 2012]

I’ve had 2 recent problems on a Windows 7 workstation that popped up after updates. Since the computer stays on all the time, I’m not sure if it was the actual updates that caused them, only that they showed up when I rebooted after the updates. The first, happened last week, when I started getting error messages saying my video card didn’t have enough memory to display a simple video. The video card is an ATI FirePro 4800 with 1GB RAM and the latest drivers, so this couldn’t be the case. I ended up removing and re-installing the video driver and all ATI software. Then my sound driver started giving errors on boot. Turns out this was caused by the ATI re-install, since it also installed a HDMI audio driver that conflicted with the one I actually use. I vaguely remember similar problems when I first installed W7, but that was long ago, so it took me a while to rediscover the solution.
Then, a week later, all my desktop shortcut icons got corrupted. Not the actual icons, just the little arrows that identify them as shortcuts. The icons appeared to have ugly generic document icons superimposed on top of them. I had turned the shortcut arrows off long ago, so why they were back, and why they had changed their appearance is a mystery. I finally went to the registry key for the icon arrows, and found that the value was set to “Empty.ico,0″, which seemed right, since I didn’t want arrows to display anyway. But windows was interpreting this as “use whatever icon I damn well please”, so I set it back to “shell32.dll,29″, and then re-hid the arrows.
I’m sure most updates are benign and useful, but sometimes they change or break certain features used by other programs or drivers. When this happens, all you can do is grit your teeth and try to find a fix, meanwhile not getting anything else done. It would be nice if all the malicious hackers in the world found something useful to do instead, so M$ would only need to release updates every year or so. [PT: April 2012]

@FargleBargle: “It would be nice if all the malicious hackers in the world found something useful to do instead, so M$ would only need to release updates every year or so” – Wouldn’t it?!

I think a lot of times, when Microsoft fixes a security issue that breaks another program or driver, the true “fault” is with sloppy programming on the program’s or driver’s part. The developer probably didn’t follow best practices as well as he or she could have, which probably didn’t mean much during testing and things seemed OK, but become apparent when the program is put to the task. I’m sure MS is at fault sometimes, don’t get me wrong, but when they are we typically see much more widespread problems. It’s happened before. [PT: April 2012]

One of my servers now has notifications for these .NET updates and I am reluctant to install them – I don’t need servers BSODding all over the shop.
So what’s the answer on these issues? I think MS got this wrong, at least for one of the updates, but I’m not about to try installing one at a time to be their beta tester on a production box… [PT: April 2012]

This morning I had a lovey, fast PC running windows 7 32 bit, with office 2007 and also access 2003 for programming purposes. After windows did 24 updates just before lunch, the whole lot has stopped, and i mean come to a virtual standstill and Access 2003 will not run macros at all. I expect, as usual,it will take hours to sort out and who will pay for the time lost? [PT: April 2012]

Tuesday April 10, 2012, Microsoft updates produced a new kind of crash (to me). The usual boot screen comes up displaying the e-machine logo, waits for a long time, and then goes to a non-repsonsive black screen with a DOS style cursor blinking in the upper left. No error codes are displayed. Will not respond to anything. I can get to the boot-up and BIOS screens using the F keys if I do it quick. Choosing “fail-safe settings” or “default settings” changes nothing. Can’t get into safe mode.

The computer is a three year old e-machine from Best Buy, running Vista. It never completed its set-up of the updates.

Any ideas? [PT: April 2012]

@CM in Ohio: I’d dig up the Vista disc you hopefully have, boot to it, and try the System Restore option first. If that doesn’t work, try a Startup Repair. [PT: April 2012]

I lost my internet connection after I installed the windows update last night. I ran the diagnostic tool and it said to check wires and connections, turn the router off for 3 minutes and then back on. I did all that a few times and the internet connection was not restored. I have Windows XP Pro and have never had a problem with automatic windows updates before. [PT: April 2012]

Getting blue screen and Driver_irql_not_less_or_equal error when Windows tries to install updates yesterday and today, running XP. A hard shut down and reboot gets me back up and running, but this is no fun. Any fixes? [PT: April 2012]

Breaks Active directory too… Anyone know where to report these problems? [PT: April 2012]

@Mike: Here you go: http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/. This is your best bet unless you have a support contract with Microsoft. [PT: April 2012]

I have an Acer Aspire 5532 laptop and have been having similar problems with this update. When I try to restart my computer after installing the updates, it sits on a screen saying “Preparing to configure Windows. Please do not turn computer off” indefinitely. I let it sit for over 8 hours before finally getting frustrated and turning it off. I then had to go into safe mode and restart from there to get it to boot up normally, getting a message afterward telling me that the updates failed. I have repeated this process 5 or 6 times over the past 2 days with the exact same result. [PT: April 2012]

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with Windows 7, less than 2 yrs old. After my computer re-booted after the updates, my entire system has been erased!! I lost all my documents, pictures, iTunes library (iTunes wasn’t even installed), my desktop icons all gone. I’m FREAKING OUT!!! Why did this happen?? [PT: April 2012]

@Lori: Try not to freak out too much. I’ve seen this happen a few times before, not after a Windows update, but after some other issues. I doubt your stuff is gone – chances are your user profile had an issue and Windows loaded a default one. Honestly, I’d just restart. That’s it. See if things come back. If not, head to Windows Explorer and see if you can locate your old user profile in C:\Users\[NAME]. [PT: April 2012]

Power off and left my Windows 7 installing (11 I think) updates.
When I turned it on again I get an error and will not boot.
Cannot get in with SAFE MODE either.
How can I system restore if I can’t get in.
I can access the Win7 drive since I have Win8 and XP installed in different partitions. [PT: April 2012]

@David: You can run System Restore via System Recovery Options, which you can access by booting to the Windows 7 DVD. [PT: April 2012]

I had the same crash issue with my m11x. I was minding my own business, and suddnely, in the corner of my eye, I see my 4 month old Alienware computer go BSOD, and after this it didn’t boot properly. I had to run system repair, which refused to work, though it seemed to have recovered the computer to a state before the updates anyways. I am now waiting to install the updates, untill a fix has been made! [PT: April 2012]

Win7×64, just bricked my laptop and I’m in the middle of doing three websites for a client. Optical drive is dead so I have no way of doing a system restore without buying a new drive. Thanks Microsoft! [PT: April 2012]

Finally got my laptop re-started with Windows 7. I too lost internet connection and to reboot router and laptop. However, old XP desktop is stuck at Dell screen and will not boot at all. I have a USB keyboard that is plugged in but apparently dead b/c no green light appears on the USB port connection (but works fine on laptop). So I guess I’ll have to go and buy a plug in keyboard so that I can try to hit F12 or F2 since those are my only options. Any advice w/b appreciated. Thanks! [PT: April 2012]

My update went ok . but i am seeing ie9 lock ups and crashes ..the crash is related to the NVIDIA drivers 296.10 .
SYSTEM:
windows 7 x64
phenom ii 965be ,asus mobo, 460 gtx ,
I will try updating to the new beta drivers , and disable hardware acceleration in ie9 to see if any of those help. [PT: April 2012]

I love the way comments are made about RESTORING but what if you can´t back into Windows !
I even tried repair from CD and that didn´t work either.
I get “problem communicating with a device connected to your PC” even though I have disconnected everything !
I got an error with Fs_rec.sys (which apparently was updated) and I replaced it with the old version, now the system resets while booting.
I know it is not my hardware because I am in Windows 7 booted from a different partition in same drive.
This is obviously caused by MICROSOFT updates….can they be held accountable ? Have they published any info on these problems ? [PT: April 2012]

My two computers froze at “Configure Windows updates. Do not turn off your computer.” Cold booting takes me to the same situation.

Configuration 1: (desk)
Win7 Prof 64-bit
w/Office 2007
ASUS M5A78L-MLX
Radeon HD 3000 GPU
Phenom II X4-965
8GB *GB Ballistix DDR3 PC3

Configuration 2: (home)
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit
w/Office 2007
ASUS M5A78L-MLX
Radeon HD 3000 GPU
Phenom II X4-965
4GB *GB Ballistix DDR3 PC3 [PT: April 2012]

I just ran my updates and I believe one of the last updates I noticed being installed was a new video driver. Pretty quickly after it started my monitors when black even though the computer was still running so I prayed it would come back after the driver was updated. Now I can’t boot my computer it starts windows then my whole computer shuts off. Any thoughts? I have tried a boot to safe mode, I have tried to run system recovery, along with anything else I can think of to get back into windows and remove the driver, however my computer either just randomly goes black and then off or just restarts on its own. [PT: April 2012]

SOB Frekin update ruined my computer! Microsoft = Virus! [PT: April 2012]

Since the latest Windows 7 update automatically installed itself on my machine yesterday, I’m no longer able to LOG INTO websites that require a username and password. I can still read websites to my heart’s content but cannot get into Facebook, Yahoo mail, etc. The login page just hangs after I type in my name and password. It seems to correlate with the update but I can’t figure out what’s going on!!! [PT: April 2012]

@Margaret: Not sure if you’re still having this problem, but I’d start by following all the basic advice like clearing cache, cookies, etc. If that doesn’t help, try anotehr browser and see if that does the trick. If that fixes it, then we know for sure it’s an IE thing, probably related to a security setting that got changed thanks to the updates. [PT: April 2012]

HI, My Dell xps l502x updated (microsoft) on Thursday (12.02.2012) since then when I go to shut down within seconds it reboots. Any suggestions please. [PT: April 2012]

My Thinkpad updated overnight and this morning it has an active desktop error and responds extremely slowly to everything.
System Restore doesn’t work, so I manually uninstalled what updates I could (that’s taken 2 houtrs at the speed this is running).
Seems fine now even though there was one update that had no uninstall option. [PT: April 2012]

HP Compaq 8510w here. I’m getting constant BSOD’s since the update (about 15 now). [PT: April 2012]

Add me to the list of victims of the latest update. Struggling to get my computer into safe mode so I can restore the system, but the computer won’t even recognize my pressing F8. Would switch to Mac but I just witnessed one of those crash last night. If these programmers are so smart why can’t they make a freakin’ OS that doesn’t brick our hardware? [PT: April 2012]

@g8r: It has a lot more to do with the folks that program the software and drivers (for your hardware) on your computer than Microsoft. That’s usually where the source of the problems lie. They just don’t sneak up until Microsoft issues an update for operating system files that these programs and drivers utilize. [PT: April 2012]

totally killed my laptop. the first time it tried to update I was able to do a restore and save it, but then it automatically updated again and gave me a blue screen. I can’t even restore now,PLEASE HELP!! [PT: April 2012]

If you have a Dell and F8 doesn’t work, use F12 at the Dell screen to get into the booting options menu. Select the option which deletes the resume data and starts the computer back-up. Oh, and pray that the BSOD doesn’t become a close friend. [PT: April 2012]

I am running Windows 7 32 bit and since update, system hangs constantly. It looked like Outlook but also hangs if only IE is running. Hard Disk light is on steady when hangs. In Outlook it produced 4863 reminders…. [PT: April 2012]

Like many others, my Windows update froze, so I eventually rebooted. After the normal Dell F2 or F12 page, and the BIOS drives page, I get BSOD with cursor. No opportunity for F8 and safe mode. I’ve tried Dell System recover discs (can choose safe mode, but just get login page without any user icons – stop) and am now trying Norton IS 2012 as it has a boot disc. However, this forces a full system scan (unavoidable) which will probably take longer than the Windows update. I have no idea if the m/c will try to reboot afterwards (with my time therefore wasted) or if it’ll return to a safe mode windows from which I can do a restore. If not, I have no idea how to get out of this error. My advice is NEVER carry out a Windows Update unless you want a £2K Dell door stop. Anyone else interested in a class action against Microsoft? [PT: April 2012]

Well, I tried f8 and f12 nothing, I don’t get a dell screen all I get is a blue screen and my hard drive turning, I don’t think my keys are even working, I hit my caps lock and the light that usually comes on isn’t coming on…weird. I am losing out on a work day here!! [PT: April 2012]

This is not just an HP issue. I have several Acer machines in the feild that have suffered from this. In my cases they all boot windows, tell you that Windows recovered form a serious error.

The reboot or BSOD times are very very consistent. If you look in event viewer it’s exactlly to the second, every hour.

In my cases all machines are Acer desktops within 2 years old and they’re all running Win 7 64 bit.

Has onayone been abale to uninstall the offending update with sucsess.? [PT: April 2012]

HP DV 7 Windows 7 Home Premium BSOD after update. It turned off Avast Antivirus–cannot restart it. –Control panel not active. Tried System Restore–failed. Tried to access Windows Update to turn off Auto updates. Updates will not open. Would sure appreciate some suggestions. [PT: April 2012]

ADL, my computer was crippled by the Microsoft updates. Luckily I save all of my important documents on flash drives regularly; as they say, there are 2 types of computer users: those who have lost data and those who are going to lose data.

I could not boot up to the main Windows screen, safe mode would not start, and the boot disc failed to install. I had to create a Windows XP boot disc and integrate SATA II drivers into the image using N-Lite and use this updated Windows XP boot disc to format my hard-drive.

After the hard-drive formatted, I ceased the windows XP install, started the Windows 7 installation, which now was working.

The problem is that even though I now have successfully reinstalled the Windows 7 OS, it is unbelievably sluggish. It’s like I’m running on an old 386, it’s incomprehensible.

I’ve checked all of the physical connections on my Hard Drive Disk and motherboard, but I’m stuck for a while.

Looks like this is going to turn into a weekend project for me. Maybe it’s the excuse I need to get a Solid State Drive. [PT: April 2012]

Did the update and now the mouse pointer bounces around the screen (mostly centered on the upper left) jumping and clicking. It’s a Dell Latitude XT3 (laptop w/ tablet functions) and I had to turn off the touch input. It was exciting trying to make the changes while the pointer is jumping around the screen. [PT: April 2012]

The April 2012 updates also messed up my Fujitsu Laptop. It would boot normally let me log in then freeze, the cursor moved but that was it. Looking at the updates it seemed as though they had been installed multiple times (5 or 6 each). I managed to boot into safe mode and restore to get it working like normal. [PT: April 2012]

Well at least it’s not just me, lol! Same thing here, on a brand new Dell Inspiron 620 with Windows7. Took Startup Repair a couple of tries but then I got in & things seemed ok. Until the update tried again last night & same thing. I did get the option to System Restore and things are ok now so I’m going to turn off auto-update and wait a few days! Of course as soon as I typed “things are ok” Firefox froze for several minutes! Sigh. Good luck everyone… [PT: April 2012]

I’m convinced this issue is in some way related to SATA controllers [PT: April 2012]

the April 10, 2012 Microsoft updates have caused my Gateway Desktop with XP sp3 operating system to lock up once everyday and has to be rebooted, I never ever have had this problem before and it started the day of update. I have a friend who has the same system and its happening to him as well. Any ideas ? [PT: April 2012]

I have an HP Pavilion DV7. Ever since the update ran the morning of April 11th my laptop has been working at 50% if that. Web pages are sluggish if they open at all. The internet connection isn’t recognized even though it shows to be connected. The computer will not shut down or restart on its own, just stays suspended in “shutting down” mode. I’ve tried system restore in both regular and safe mode, neither will work. I tried to uninstall the recent updates but that failed as well. I’m at my wits’ end. Help!! [PT: April 2012]

Since the update my computer turns on and then crashes ever time around 1 minute after boot, the screen just freezes, had to boot in safe mode and do a system restore for 2 days earlier and its working fine again? [PT: April 2012]

I have Dell Inspiron 1545 with Win 7. Since updates my windows update continually tries to update the same 5 items. The updates will “instal” and the windows updater reads “no new updates”, but within seconds it lists 5 important updates available – same as the las five. Windows update reports as successful e verytime. I have used Micrsofts program to fix windows update, but it doesn’t fix the problem. Help. [PT: April 2012]

I have an ancient VAIO VGN-S460P.

Luckily, after the latest XP update fiasco, at least the wireless adapter was still working – so I could download two of the drivers I needed.

The LAN adapter and video were both screwed.

Downloading and installing the old drivers from Sony’s support web site fixed both problems. Doesn’t MicroSoft have regression tests for this? Or is my VAIO just not on their list?

I think this will have to be my last “automatic update” for this computer. It’s the second time I’ve been bitten by MS updates on this one. Hey MS, why don’t you stop supporting XP – I doubt your doing anyone a favor! [PT: April 2012]

The CULPRIT is definitely an auto update to my NVIDIA DISPLAY ADAPTER. I rolled back to an old driver and all the problems are gone! [PT: April 2012]

I would love to reinstall my os, but my keys won’t work, I have a dell xps m1330 with the slot drive disc and it took my disk in but now I can’t get it out. the only button that seems to be working on it is the on and off button, also it seems like the battery is not charging although it is plugged in. the battery light comes on and goes right back off. weird. Come on microsoft we need an answer here!! [PT: April 2012]

I have a Samsung laptop which I just recently purchased (manufacture date of Oct 2011). It has a core i5 processor and 8 GB RAM running on Win 7 Home Premium (64-bit). Everything was perfect until this update which caused me to experience 3 blue screen occurrences.

When I restarted my laptop after the first blue screen (Apr 11, 2012 afternoon), windows said it had a problem with desktop gadgets, so I removed my weather gadget as it’s the only gadget that I was using.

The 2nd (Apr 11, 2012 evening) and 3rd time (Apr 12, 2012) the blue screen happened, they had something to do with microsoft office. I was working with a microsoft word document when suddenly my computer crashed. [PT: April 2012]

Updating several patches from the april run, rusulted in a hang with status “100% complete” after reboots and safe boots, system now hangs at 35%. Gonna do a system restore, this patchround suck big time. Took ages to begin with

Samsung i5 laptop R730 win7 64 Home premium and Office 2010 [PT: April 2012]

After the 4-15 update my Outlook Express message rules vanished! How do I get them back?? I am NOT looking forward to re-entering over 800 of them by hand! [PT: April 2012]

I came back from vacation on the 12th of April, powered up my computer, did a complete system scan with Norton 360 ( o threats found ). My computer recieved the updates in the a.m. of the 13th. When I woke the next morning, my computer was frozen at ” 100% collecting files for crash dump”. The computer cannot be booted up ever since then. I am going to have to do a clean install because of this just to get my system running again. Thanks a lot, Windows update! [PT: April 2012]

I’m using Windows 7 and everytime I try to download the updates from last tuesday my computer crashes with squiggly lines and loud noises… [PT: April 2012]

Another Windows Update disaster… Updates wiped ALL of my printers out, from PDF printers in Quickbooks to physically attached printers. Running Vista, and this isn’t the first time it has happened. System restore to an earlier point is the only fix, but remember to turn off automatic updates.

I forgot to, and had to do a 2nd system restore just a few days later.Will try it again next month since they usually develop a fix, but never acknowledge the problem. [PT: April 2012]

I have been getting system crashes throught out 3 of my pc on my network this month, done reinstall windows and problem still occurs, have no other idea why this is happening so i am pointing my finger at microsoft updates.

Any remedies would be much appreciated. [PT: April 2012]

All 3 lap tops restored before updates..Working better than ever…BUT…Now what…How safe are we…All 3 are at work..Need up dates or buy all new pc…..Man i hate M.S [PT: April 2012]

The windows update disengaged my microsoft security essentials and the firewall. I did not notice this. Got a virus that I’m not sure I’m rid of. had issues reengaging the security stuff, some was re-loaded but the firewall will not activate now. I downloaded comodo firewall and anti virus, but it will not finish a full system scan. I’m running vista.anyone else? [PT: April 2012]

Have now got about 40 hp laptops running xp in the company that have been freezing since they received the latest windows updates…any fix yet???? [PT: April 2012]

I’ve had a BSOD on two of my computers, an old Acer Aspire 5720 and a really old Toshiba Tecra M2. Is there a fix yet? PLEASE! [PT: April 2012]

Updated this past weekend and they seemed to install super fast. Left my computer off for a few days and have trouble loading windows. After rebooting I get into windows and notice three things right off the bat. 1.Internet Explorer is gone from my quickbar 2.Norton is no longer running 3.Microsoft Office is completely gone from my computer. I have a custom PC I built myself and have never had any problems with it. All my restore points are screwed up (closest I have to April is now January 9th, when last week I already had four for April). Installation seems screwed to high hell now. Will probably be reinstalling windows tomorrow. Not a happy camper. [PT: April 2012]

Add me to the list of victims of the latest update. Another Windows Update disaster…
At least I think it was after the M$ update on my two WinXP pcs (One Dell, on HP).
Suddenly I have many more programs starting up than I did before. I had a number of unticked items in MSConfig.sys start-up list, and they managed to become active again as well as a few extra ones.
Strange though, not a single reference to this anywhere else on the net.
Luckily I had backups. But now I don’t know which update to install!
Bl**dy Microsoft and their useless products! [PT: April 2012]

I have an Acer Predator that was purchased last July 2011 and runs Windows 7 64 bit home premium. My computer just updated last night because I was gone for a week and had it turned off. This morning I turned it on and found that I had lost my internet connection, as well as several peripherals – I through K drives (I think those are my USB ports?) and my laser printer. control panel says everything is there and ready, but the computer cannot talk to them. My modem and router are up and running as well!

I have already used system restore but that has not helped the problem. i fear I will have to dig out my restore disks and use them. Had always been lucky with auto update before but guess I can’t trust them anymore! [PT: April 2012]

After the update, my computer would not boot to Windows – stopped at black screen with blinking cursor in upper left corner. I was able to get into BIOS, but everytime I tried a normal boot it didn’t work. Since it’s still under warranty, I took it in for service. It worked fine for them, they did complete diagnostics and found NO problems. I brought it back home, plugged it in, and got the black screen again. Turns that my printer was preventing my computer from working. Apparently it was trying to boot from the card reader in my USB printer! [PT: April 2012]

I don’t know if this happened after the latest patch but I run Google Chrome. If I have two or more tabs open, I cannot go back to a different tab without the window closing on me. Also, my computer will not allow me to use any other window. I have to open Task Manager to allow me full access to all the icons on my toolbar and desktop.

My system was recently fully restored and I have not downloaded any programs that have not worked normally in the past together. Could this be a result of the patch or are there more serious issues? [PT: April 2012]

Same on my HP Pavilion zt3000, after the 12, it would BSOD after a couple of minutes, blaming a DLL for the ati graphics card. I reinstalled the driver, but it is still BSOD, and seems to be saying it is the RAM page file.
Glad I’m no the only one, weird it seems to do it if the machine has been switched off a few hours. [PT: April 2012]

After installing Security Update for Microsoft Works 9 (KB2680317) my usb keyboard and mouse along with my trackpad on my acer aspire 7745 would no longer work. I had to power down and push F8 to start repair my computer and system restore until before this update was installed. Please fix Microsoft. [PT: April 2012]

My Dell Desktop running Windows 7 went into some weird hibernate mode during Windows Update on 4/20/2012. Had to hold power button to force restart. Now all I can get is black screen and blinking cursor, with no power to keyboard, mouse, etc…so I can’t access safe mode, go to a restore point, etc.

I have tested everuthing, from PSU, to reseating video card and memory…reconnecting sata cables. Nothing works. I have a Win 7 repair disk as well as the OS disk, and I can’t get the system to boot from either, as I can’t access the BIOS.

I think my gaming rig just got bricked. Holy mother of god. [PT: April 2012]

I’m not happy at all. These latest updates have the startup running in a loop and it never makes it to the login screen. None of this happened until today when the thing updated. Looks like I’m going over to Mac. I have had it with the Windows nonsense. [PT: April 2012]

Latest 25 April 2012 Update, apparently for Microsoft Security Essentials – via normal Windows Update (I have Windwos XP sp3). I don’t have it on automatic, so I can choose what to actually install. It downloaded fine. I clicked custom install and clicked next.

It hangs while “installing” for over 2 hours. I cancelled the install. It hanged further. I rebooted. Did the same thing again.

MSE is not starting up. The update disabled it but didn’t install the update.

I might have to a system restore [PT: April 2012]

Lastest updates were applied by accident, stupidly clicked through by accident, and my dell precision, Win7 x64, would not restart.

Now in the process of restoring and that’s been running over 45 minutes with no sign of progress.

MS should be ashamed, this is really unacceptable. [PT: April 2012]

after the update, my system would not shut off, would not come out of sleep mode, and MS office 2010 quit working, even the jump drive MS on the go would not work. After several hours on the phone with Microsoft, the tech had me do a restore(everything working again) and he told me to just turn off automatic update. and wait until (somehow) we all hear they have fixed the problem. I told the first tech that that was only a bandaid and that someone needed to contact the group responsable about the patch and let them know that there was a problem, HE hung up.
the next guy said leave updates off and someday they would let us know about a fix. [PT: April 2012]

probably after last update: i have all the time blue screen then reboot and again again, is brand new hp pavilion g6 any solution???
that happen most of the time when my wife goes on facebook, on flash game, i re-instaled flash player nothing help [PT: April 2012]

Recent updates causing pc to continually reboot. KB numbers were 2621440, 979309,2653956 and 2675157. After Updating I retsarted the pc as suggested. Each time it got to the XP loading screen, monitor went blank and then the pc restarted.

Using F8 at the start gets me to the screen with options of Safe Mode, etc, I’ve tried all of them with no success. Eventually had to use my XP pro dvd to repair the installation and that took ages to go through all the updates, SP2 and 3 and the updates since then. Yesterday I had a look at what updates were available and one of the 4 above was missing, the last one ending in 157. Aha methinks that must have been faulty so maybe it’s safe to load the updates.

Gues what? I was wrong. Same result with the pc continually rebooting at the same point. So I’ve spent the last ??? hours sorting it out. and am now back to the point I was before I did the updates, vowing not to allow any more updates, at least until I know what the problem is. Previously I had a second disk drive spare to copy a backup image of my main drive just in case. I do not have that available at the moment and it was time consuming but I may resort to that yet.

Any ideas/comments on what the problem may be would be appreciated. Thanks. [PT: April 2012]

Folks I had the same problem after downloading updates about 2 weeks ago. Restoring to earlier dates did not work. My computer is a toshiba Satellite 64bit running windows 7. The only way I could sort this out was by reformatting Hard Drive. I have a Dell inspiron running Vista. I was not downloading any updates, but on Saturday night my ladyfriend was on my computer and clicked to start dowloads. As it was late at night I had to leave computer downloading. On Sunday morning my computer would not boot up. Tried System Restore etc. without any luck. Again I had to return to factory settings. Luckily enough I had both computers backed up on external hard drive.
My son said he also had the same trouble and he spent whole day trying to recover it. He had to re-format HD & reload windows 7. [PT: April 2012]

after the updates completed took my HP Pavilion dv7 with Home Premium 7 down one by one I was able to finally get it to power up after numerous failures and then got it into recovery mode> I am very mad @ Microsoft for killing my laptop… and now I am afraid to ever update it.
1st lost WiFi
2nd Windows would not boot
3rd video would not display at all
4th key board showed only red lights on Wifi sound and Caps lock
this was the most frustrating issue I have ever troubleshot… [PT: April 2012]

Doesn’t seem to matter what the problem is here. Glad I did not allow all of the updates. No response at all? [PT: April 2012]

I hope you guy don’t mind but I have a request we all use the KB # of the update that caused a problem. If update was loading from a printer, name of printer etc. [PT: April 2012]

Wow…I can’t believe there has been no response to these issues!! I’ve restored my ASUS/Windows 7/64 bit machine to factory settings twice a week since the second week of April updates. It crashes in so many different ways I have stopped counting…those updates have totally messed up my machine and I can’t seem to fix it. It can’t update anything…it crashes with lines and noises…it can’t even go a whole day without crashing in some way or another. I can get on, but I don’t dare keep any information on here and eventually it’s just not going to restart…what is Microsoft going to do? This is a brand new machine! [PT: April 2012]

Prev comment above dated April 30, 2012 at 7:42 am
I’ve bought a 2nd disk drive and installed XP and every update, almost, that there was. I’d forgotten how long it all takes! After every critical update a further check revealed more of them until all that was left was 4 optional updates.

Do I really need them or should I pass on them, that was the question. Everything was working I had my emails sending/receiving- a brand new, up to date OS. Lovely. Ok install the 4 remaining updates which seemed to work. One last check to see if the updated updates needed any updating and…..

‘Updates cannot connect to the internet….’ No network, email accounts vanished and various other problems. Luckily (?) a system restore did just that -almost. I still had to go through the email accounts setup again. Elapsed time of approx’ a (long) day, and I haven’t re-installed any other software yet.

I’m reminded of the ‘if Microsft made cars’ jokes. Fortunately they don’t and even if they did there would be many, many other alternatives. [PT: April 2012]

upgrades wiped out my os on laptop,rendered it useless and wiped out critical files on my desktop,laid off work b4 xmas so fixin evry thing is goin 2 b a nightmare not 2 mention savin the money for it,not a happy bunny [PT: April 2012]

These updates wiped out my Gateway laptop twice. Yes I was dumb enough to try the updates again. (Windows 7 64 bit). Could not use system restore. Blue screens galore. Spent 8 hours wiping the hard drive and finally got the Gateway recovery discs to work. Now I have to do the entire process again. [PT: April 2012]

I have faced similar problem, after updates were installed automatically to my SONY VAIO Laptop I am unable restart it, it stucks at strat up and I tried every thing but unable to boot the same. I need to take it to the experts and I fear that perhaps I will loose all my data. I wasted more than 8 hours to get it corrected but to no avail. Can we make a claim against such update which distroy entire systems. please anyone having experience guide me….. [PT: April 2012]

A case of “the cure’s worse that the potential threat”! [PT: April 2012]

well, my xps 1330 had a fried motherboard after the update. so sad.
It was working fine just seconds before the update installed.
betty [PT: May 2012]

@Betty: Updates from Microsoft can’t cause physical issues like a fried motherboard. It was probably just an unfortunate coincidence. Sorry to hear about that. [PT: May 2012]

Furious. After the patch, I am unable to open WordPerfect. So far, that’s the only application I’ve found that has been killed but a big, expensive one. My computer is an HP Pavilion a450n. I have NO idea how to undo the updates. [PT: May 2012]

@kell: If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, the easiest way to undo the updates is to boot to your Windows disc and then run a System Restore from there, choosing the restore point that was automatically created by Windows Update right before it installed the updates. [PT: May 2012]

After doing the adobe recent update it makes my windows firewall shut off. then it wont let me turn it back on. Then i checked somethings in the services area and three of the things that should be running to support firewall arent. when i try to start them it says items may be deleted. so i just restored to earlier date again and firewall is working again. but in mean time what should i do for adobe updates that they recommend? [PT: May 2012]

@theresa: Microsoft doesn’t issue Adobe updates. I just wanted to make that clear… that’s strictly Adobe that handles that and is off topic to this discussion. However: yes, that’s weird! I would suggest downloaded the latest version of Adobe Reader (is that the only Adobe program you have?) and see if that installs OK. That would (should) circumvent the need to update, at least this time. (Also, Adobe updates aren’t usually nearly as important as updates to Windows itself and if you want to skip the update, that’s probably fine. I’m only aware of a few Adobe updates that were very serious and those were years ago) [PT: May 2012]

Tim: I know the update caused the problem…It installed once and it caused a blue screen which I was able to work around and do a system restore, the computer worked fine after that. Then the stupid update ran again and after that there was no fixing it. So maybe it wasn’t the mother board that was fried, but that is what the repair guy says, because he has no idea what the update has done. Betty [PT: May 2012]

@Betty: I probably wasn’t clear. No doubt the Windows update was the catalyst for the problem. You may have been able to use your computer for x number of days/weeks/months longer if this update hadn’t installed but if your motherboard really is fried, then the update wasn’t responsible for that.

Now the other possibility is, as you say, the repair guy was wrong. If that’s the case, find another repair guy. It should be easy to tell if Windows needs reinstalled (the worst case scenario from a botched update) or if there has been a physical hardware failure. [PT: May 2012]

The latest updates crashed my DELL XPS720 running Win 7. Won’t start…goes to repair utility. [PT: May 2012]

Update crashed my entire computer today. Lovely how Samsung and microsoft don’t think they are responsible for their products basically making my computer useless. 10 month old computer. Do not support these guys and let them get away with NOT standing behind their products! [PT: May 2012]

Updates crashed my computer last Friday, had to restore to factory settings. Used mostly for gaming-had to purchase some games all over again. Today more updates, crashed again!!!!! Dell with windows 7. [PT: May 2012]

Very unusual problem and have never seen it happen ever. May 2012 updates combined with optional Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network driver update on an HP 6200 Pro have caused a client’s PC to DISABLE the hard drive in the BIOS, and cause it to try booting from the network instead. SOLUTION: Enable the hard drive again by pressing F10 during power on, navigate to the Boot Order and press F5 to re-enable. The client would not have been able to know how to disable the hard drive, so definitely not a user error. [PT: May 2012]

@Obi1: That’s very strange. I’d guess the driver update is squarely to blame for this one, though even that’s a little strange. I did see something like this happen once before, and it was with an Intel NIC driver update. Just the driver update, no other Windows updates. I swore then that the user must have done something but now I’m questioning that. [PT: May 2012]

After the May 2012 Windows 7 updates on my Toshiba laptop, javascript seemed to stop working. My IE browser insists it is enabled (Tools-Security etc. following the standard MS instructions) but when I log into my Blackboard website it won’t let me log in because it claims javascript is not enabled. Other javascript based functions also don’t work (which makes it fun to try to contact MS tech support: you have to use javascript navigate through their pages!).

The desktop widgets have also stopped working, I assume due to the same problem.

So, any other settings I should be checking? [PT: May 2012]

@dkary: Have you tried defaulting all the IE security settings? Any chance JS works fine in Firefox or Chrome? [PT: May 2012]

Updates are taking FOREVER. My windows 7 Acer Aspire has NEVER had this problem, but right now it’s stuck at update 3 of 13 (Thursday May 10, 2012 12:08 a.m.) and has been like this for over an hour. Like I said, I’ve never had this issue before. Is anyone else having this extended update time issue? Or is it a personal internal problem, which I doubt. [PT: May 2012]

@Johnathan: I wouldn’t call it a “personal internal problem” per se, but no, there are not widespread reports of problem like this. I’ve personally seen May’s updates fully install without problem on dozens of machines already. Like nearly all Windows Update / Patch Tuesday problems, there’s probably some preexisting issue that these updates are bringing to light. I know none of that helps, though.

I would just restart and hope for the best. I have some more specific guidance here. [PT: May 2012]

After Windows Update installed about 22 automatic updates on May 10th, 2012 I found Windows Media Center would not load Live TV and gave the Blue Screen error message “Disk Error A temporary problem occurred when Windows Media Center attempted to play TV. Please restart Windows Media Center or the computer, and then try again.” I had to System Restore to before the automatic updates to watch TV again. Very frustrating indeed. [PT: May 2012]

After istalling these May 9,2012 MSFT Security updates, which took over 45 minutes to install, all three of my XP systems still work, but my CPU usage on IE8 has increased to the point that the IE screen is constantly seizing and jerking. Flash video is now barely viewable. Before this update, all IE8 viewing was very smooth. This has occurred on all (3) systems. I tried several sites on both IE8 and then on Firefox. The above described problems only occur on IE8. Firefox viewing is normal.
I hope that whatever MSFT did, they come out with a FIX, or I think I will be forced to use Firefox instead of IE8.

So far, I have only noticed this slowdown on IE8. [PT: May 2012]

Crashed my laptop and had to do a system restore, but it has restored to the point after my updates not before, and now I no longer have connection to the Internet. windows error says that proxy settings are not set? Checked the proxy settings and just port 80 is set (I think that is all that should be in there) as I am just a home user. now I am trying to use my android to find answers about my laptop…. not easy…. android device manager my network adaptors all come up with warning triangles, so that can’t be good…… any advice would be greatly appreciated [PT: May 2012]

@Nancy: Did you have an earlier restore point to choose from? It should still be there. [PT: May 2012]

After applying updates on May 9th, ,any applications will not launch and no connection to the internet. System restore says it’s successful, but it is incorrect as it never gets past initialization, says succeeded after reboot however all the restore points are still present because it did not roll back. I assume it could not launch some underlying application of system restore and is why Windows cannot repair itself (not surprised). [PT: May 2012]

After installing the May 2012 security updates (13) the computer is very slow due to disk usage. JavaScript also stopped working so a lot of software including Adobe Suity CS5.5 is taking ages to open and finally pops a message to stop a script (JS) from running. Major fail as I’m sitting at my workstation being unable to work .. [PT: May 2012]

Updated PC via Windows update last night 10 May 2012 (23 updates) and computer locked up after initializing all updates but froze on installing #3 of 23. Waited 2 1/2 hrs but cursor also u/s. Turned computor off and then back on onlt to start up going through Dell page then orange/yellow moving bar at base of screen then a black screen apears with a solid white _ sign.

How do i get the PC to start up again ? ? Help as i have my GCSE course work held on the PC which is now not working thanks to the updates.

Is there someone i can contact in microsoft ?? [PT: May 2012]

@Gl: If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can boot to your install disc and run System Restore from there, undoing the updates. Yes, you can contact Microsoft: here.

Received the updates last night and of course my computer was restarted when waking up. What I noticed after the updates was that everything on my computer looks like the theme of like the first computers. Very gray and boxy looking, dont know how else to explain it. I tried changing the themes and color options and such but it does not give me but one option, and I know that having Windows vista there were way more options before the update. I could use help with this issue. Thanks [PT: May 2012]

@shannon Ellington: Sounds to me like a display driver problem. Do you see any problem notifications in Device Manager in Control Panel, specifically with video hardware? [PT: May 2012]

Windows 7 with office 2003 or 2007 Excel and Word files are pulling from the server very very slow again.Just like last years file validation problem.
Anybody else seeing this? [PT: May 2012]

After the may updates, the network connection is no longer working correctly. The dhcp client does not get an address until after 16 minutes of trying. Nothing works correctly, because there was no ip address when the login started. Do a system restore to the point before the updates and everything works correctly again.
Does anyone have a clue as to which one of these updates is causing this problem?
Anyone else have the same problem? [PT: May 2012]

@ Tim Fisher:
I don’t believe you on that about Microsoft updates not being able to harm hardware. My computer was working perfectly until the update. 2 days ago it did the auto-update & made it through all 12 updates, shut itself down, & wouldn’t wake up again. I’ve built multiple computers & this is the first I’ve ever heard of or seen it happen, but I’m left with what I believe is either a fried processor or somehow my Bios has been weirdly corrupted. A jumper to clear the CMOS overnight does nothing. The symptoms are as follows: the reset & power buttons work as expected; boots up, lights on RAM light up (nice feature, that), SATA hard drive whirs, there are no unusual beeps from motherboard, all fans work as expected, processor heats up, but nothing on the monitors. I’ve tried 2 different video cards & taking out all GPU’s & plugging into onboard video & same thing; monitors remain black. Motherboard beeps like crazy if I try booting with no RAM so it’s indicating that it still has something of a brain. I’ve cycled through my RAM, 1 stick at a time. I’ve plugged in & tried booting off of my old IDE XP hard drive. I’ve tried cannibalized PSU from parts in basement … all that’s left is the processor. Now I’m off to my parents to plug the processor into identical build PC to verify that my processor is shot. At this point I hope it is, because if it isn’t I will really be tearing my hair out wondering what is up.
- Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
- Intel E6850 [PT: May 2012]

@Darin: I’ve seen really weird things happen so I suppose I can’t in good conscious say NEVER regarding this, or anything that happens on a computer. However, the way hardware works with any operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc.) doesn’t allow for software to impact hardware in the way you’re describing. If so, we’d have viruses blowing up computers all over the place. It’s just not possible (oops, there I did it again). The only thing I can think of is if a piece of software found a way to silently flash BIOS (this is almost impossible) and in the process, configure it (I don’t think BIOS allows this) to lethally overclock the motherboard or CPU. That seems really out the scope of anything a Windows update might contain.

Keep me posted, though. I’m curious how this turns out. [PT: May 2012]

I did the 10th of may 2012 update and all went through fine except this one – ” Definition Update for Microsoft Security Essentials – KB2310138 (Definition 1.125.1553.0)

Installation date: ‎10/‎05/‎2012 11:34 PM

Installation status: Failed

Error details: Code 80070020

Update type: Optional

Install this update to revise the definition files that are used to detect viruses, spyware, and other potentially unwanted software. Once you have installed this item, it cannot be removed” .

Once i had turned my computer back on, evenerything from my desktop was erased and all my internet explorer settings and just windows settings in genral were reset to default. Is there any way i can go back to how it was before the update and retrieve the missing files? [PT: May 2012]

Also i just found that my whole computer has been reset to default basically – most of my installer programs are missing and many other files that werent on my external hard drive are gone [PT: May 2012]

I had the same issues with Word and Outlook, so I tried to repair and it said that “C\ProgramFiles\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office14\MSO.DLL was corrupt, so I rebooted the pc and copied that DLL file from a working pc and replaced it and both Word and Outlook started working again. Hope this helps!! [PT: May 2012]

@vtdano: Thanks for the note! [PT: May 2012]

The 10 May 2012 patch seems to have killed my graphics. Running Win XP SP 3 on a Dell Optiplex. Current patches installed. Today’s patch required a reboot and I get the initial Win XP screen with the Intel logo and the BIOS instructions (so I know the PC is talking to the monitor). Then I get an ‘auto adjust’ message, and a brief mouse cursor. Then black. HDD sounds like its completing the bootup, but I never hear the MS boot sound. F8 doesn’t seem to work, but I’m using a wireless keyboard. Will retry as soon as I find the old one. [PT: May 2012]

Installed all updates on my Compaq Presario CQ56, cat died. I blame Microsoft. [PT: May 2012]

Updated company computers yesterday, and two laptops crashed. They are both identical…dell vostro 1015…and were the only computers that seemed to have a problem with the updates. Coincidence…I think not. Getting BSOD, and can only startup in safe mode. [PT: May 2012]

I have DELL Latitude D610, which would not start after yesterday’s Windows Updates. When I tried to start it kept going into “Startup Repair”. I even tried using “System Restore”, but that did not work either. Luckily I had a two-week old system image, which did the trick. I wish I had thought of replacing the corrupt file… that would have allowed my computer to retain the past two weeks of configuration and data changes… I don’t remember what the path/name of the corrupt file was. [PT: May 2012]

In reply to #487
Yes, all of my IE security settings are on default. No help there.
Firefox seems unaffected, it’s working fine. But that doesn’t help with my webmail or desktop gadgets. [PT: May 2012]

After the update I have a black screen. My monitor does not show the boot screen. Any suggestions on how I should proceed? [PT: May 2012]

@L.: If your computer isn’t showing anything at all after you turn it on (no boot-up information, no computer logo, etc.) then this is an issue beyond what Windows has an impact on. In other words, it wasn’t caused by any update. See this: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbysymptom/tp/computer-wont-turn-on.htm [PT: May 2012]

After update may 10th BSOD.. I did a system restore but now even safe mode won’t start up. Computer worked on the 9th, update, then broke. Nothing else installed [PT: May 2012]

Computer worked fine on 9 May., no issues.
After the 10 May update it loaded windows and then the screen went black. I waited patiently for about 30 min, then switched it off and back on. It did not even enter safe mode – loaded file names list, then windows loaded, then again blank dark screen. Cursor appeared and vanished. So each time. Did let it stay turned off for 15 min and then tried again – same story.

Finally I did let it stay and did it touch it at all. Windows loaded and after that the PC left hanging – the dark blue blank screen lasted over 4, almost 5 hours, then empty windows sky blue screen with windows name in the bottom loaded and was left hanging for over 2 hours. After that a black screen with cursor for half an hour, then again the default sky blue screen with green branches and lines/white bird with windows logo and name in the bottom and cursor (can move the cursor) has been on for over an hour….

OS: Windows 7 home premium 64-bit
CPU: Core i5-650 3.2G 4M LGA1156
Mobo: Intel DH55TC mATX DDR3, VGA, DVI, HDMI
RAM: 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 CL9 Kingston (2×2GB)
HDD: SEA BARRACUDA 7200.12 1TB SATA2 32MB
Graphics card: PNY GT 220 PCIE 1GB DDR2 DVI/HDMI SILENT
All the drivers are up to date and all the windows patches to date have been installed…

Shall I just keep waiting for hours (days?). Will it happen again when the PC is rebooted next time?
Please advise. [PT: May 2012]

Sorry, not cursor, I meant mouse arrow…
Oh, and still no progress…
The fans are on, the HDD makes quiet sound like it is being accessed/used, but no progress whatsoever…

After looking at the problem descriptions above, I am now worried that in case it ever starts running again, I am bound to find all my files/programs deleted…

Oh, and incidentally, my other PC (HP M9444SC) running Vista Home Premium 64-bit updated fine and has no issues.

Afraid to open my laptop now (has windows 7 64-bit).

Still waiting… [PT: May 2012]

@Kat: Your data is probably fine, unless you also had a physical hard drive issue by coincidence (unlikely). I’d first try an offline System Restore. You can do that by booting to your Windows 7 setup disc. [PT: May 2012]

Installed the updates, and then took over 5-10mins to reboot.
Once rebooted, Somehow lost my graphics software options, and the resolution of the screen is wrong, and very uncomfortable viewing. Somehow resolution settings are reduced and appear to be missing options to change [PT: May 2012]

@oliver: Sounds like a graphics card driver issue. I’d update/reinstall it and see if that helps. [PT: May 2012]

Good thing I have a laptop as a backup PC cause my desktop keeps bluescreening since the last update. I am really ticced off at Microsoft updates as my desktop worked perfectly till this last update. I get IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL on the bluescreen. [PT: May 2012]

@Jaz: Not sure what version of Windows you have, but if it’s Vista or 7, I’d try a Startup Repair. [PT: May 2012]

I haven’t experienced any problems on XP, but on Windows 7 Starter I found that KB2676562 slowed startup. Once this was removed & deselected KB2690533 caused an issue in the System32 folder after install & the Desktop wouldn’t load fully.
System Restore was needed in both cases. [PT: May 2012]

@Dennis: Thanks for the comment! That might be helpful to someone else seeing the same thing. [PT: May 2012]

Yo – was having problems with not enough resources to process my worksheets (after this update).

Previously I’d sort a worksheet by clicking in the top left and sorting the whole sheet. Now telling me that excel can’t do it. Colleague noticed that by just highlighting the columns I wanted sorted that excel could process.

Looks like the update makes excel try and sort all 12 billion odd cells rather than the ‘intelligent’ “just the bit that actually has data in it”.

FYI. [PT: May 2012]

Had the same problem as many of you, after update, rebooted, went through bios update screen then went to a black screen that stayed black. Tried the Windows repair options but that didn’t work. Eventually used the F8 on start and booted from last known good boot settings. My PC only ever crashes following Windows updates! Ruins a perfectly good day every time it happens. Good luck to you all in getting your machines back on… [PT: May 2012]

kb2598332 causing Word 2003 to be very slow loading files across a network (no problem with local files). Had to un-install. [PT: May 2012]

Installed these updates a few hours ago and it has caused my HP Pavillion dm4 to not be able to boot windows at all. the most I can do is run recovery manager, but it doesn’t seem to do anything other than show the old style startup loadbar for about an hour before giving up during system restore. When I try to boot windows I can get to the logo and then my computer blue screens. [PT: May 2012]

It left me hanging for several hours more (meanwhile I kept working on another PC; however, I would need them both).
Now for the whole day it has been in a restart loop. Blank dark blue/violet screen, arrow appears at some point, sometimes even the sky blue screen with windows logo and then it hangs again, goes to hibernation sometimes, wakes up on its own, restarts or few times it has had also a BSOD, did not catch the whole info as the dump happened very very fast, but one of the files I noticed was CI.dll
Please advise. What should I do? [PT: May 2012]

@Kat: I’d try an off-line System Restore (which you can only do if you have Vista or 7): Boot to your setup disc (or system repair disc you’ve made) and do a System Restore from there. [PT: May 2012]

Really frustrated here. This update ran early Wednesday morning, then my PC restarted. When the machine tried to boot back up, it pauses at the black screen with the windows logo and let out a piercing siren.

I did a system restore, had to go all the way back to April 24th to get *that* to work, got the computer running again and…

Then the update ran again this morning. Same thing. Machine restarts, and now any time I try to reboot, I get a piercing squeal from my machine and no functionality. Startup Repair and System restore now both can’t fix the problem (Since the machine made a new restore point for 5/11 that overwrote the only restore point that was actually working.

Thankfully I’ve already paid for the boot disks to totally reset the machine, but I’d rather not lose everything I have, reset the whole machine, then find that the error just happens a third time when the update runs again. [PT: May 2012]

Wow the .net framework 4 security updates take longer to install than the operating system itself!!!! Seriously, I have done numerous servers so far and I was able to Install a brand new Windows Server 2008 R2 in vm faster than it took to complete all the .net framework security updates on an already existing box! [PT: May 2012]

@cypherx: That’s certainly not normal behavior. However, when I do have problems with updates, it’s usually .NET related ones. Not sure why. [PT: May 2012]

Latest Automatic Update (May ‘12 Patches) caused serious problems with Quickbooks Pro 2011 and many other applications that rely on MSMXL. Resulted in corrupt or damaged registry / *.dat files. System restore to the day prior fixed most issues, but not fun at all. Get it together people. [PT: May 2012]

After my earlier post (522) when I said PC hung after registry (not BIOS) update, and I got it working using the F8 menu’s – damned thing auto installed same updates when I shut down (stupid – I should have expected it). This time I couldn’t get it running with any of the options on the PC. Eventually tried a couple of the utilities on ‘Hirens Boot CD’ and got it working. Not happy at all. My set-up is standard build, you would have thought MS would have tested these updates before release… [PT: May 2012]

@Andy: They do test the updates. And the problem is that there are millions of “standard builds” out there. That’s the disadvantage about the flexibility in PCs and Windows: a near infinite number of “basic” hardware and software programs. [PT: May 2012]

HP Pavillion Dv4!!

These patches have completely screwed my laptop up! For those of you saying “this cannot be..” shot ur mouthes, it BE! This is a major screwup from HP/Microsoft, so bad I was sure it was malware or something.

I have tried restore points up to a month or more back, no luck. The windows hourglass spinning icon just spins, machine fan and CPU running full on full on. This was exactly after the updates for a few days back.

So far, the only thing I can think of is full windows wipe and re-install.

B [PT: May 2012]

I have Windows 7, 64 Bit professional. After the update, I saw the little red flag in the toolbar and learned that I did not have any virus protection. The update removed Microsoft Security Essentials! When I tried to reinstall MSE, Windows 7 stopped the installation. I e-mailed Microsoft support and have not received a reply. In the meantime, I installed AVG and doubt that I will reinstall the Microsoft product.

Based on the other comments, Microsoft has a real problem here, But nothing concerning the issue can be found on their website. It would be nice if they fessed up when they messed up!! [PT: May 2012]

MS updates installed on my XP Pro OK (apparently). After reboot, McAfee installed updates and prompted for restart. Allowed re-start and disk i/o error caused boot failure. Also stopping any kind of recovery from recovery console. Looks like I need to flatten windows and re-install(again!!) [PT: May 2012]

@Jenahonn: Disk I/O errors are usually hardware related (i.e. bad hard drive). Did you solve this by reinstalling Windows or did you have to do something else? [PT: May 2012]

should have added that xp still out. Using my Vista Home Premium HD which has updated both MS & McAfee without issues. My preferred OS for work-related progs is XP Pro (used mainly for PLC stuff, a lot of it legacy software not suitable even in XP mode). Win7 Pro & Ultimate u/g costs currently prohibitive. PC is HP Compaq NX6310, a stable machine
until you change something fundamental. [PT: May 2012]

Noticed I had an alert for Microsoft updates in my toolbar this afternoon and clicked “restart to finish installation”. That was the last time my laptop worked. Computer shut down and never came back. I can’t even get to the system restore options because it won’t power back on. I’ve tried holding F8 while powering on and the zero key while powering on with the same result: power indicator light comes on, hear a beep, light turns off. I have a Toshiba Satellite L775D-S7340. 6 months-ish old. Oh, and it’s my company computer with everything I need to work loaded on it. Luckily, I am backed up on an external hard drive but I NEED to be able to get this laptop functioning again. Any thoughts? [PT: May 2012]

@elisabetk: Windows updates can’t cause your computer to do what you’re saying it’s doing, so we can remove that from our troubleshooting. You need to look at hardware now. I’d try removing the battery and AC power for several minutes. Then try just the AC power and see if you can get it turned back on. [PT: May 2012]

My laptop got stuck on: …” Installing update 8 of 13 ….” from last night. I wonder how long do I need to wait ….. [PT: May 2012]

New to this forum, not a tecchie, have 3 year old Toshiba satellite laptop. The windows updates installed automatically (I used to have them set to ask first). At next boot-up, went into blue screen for ages but eventually all appeared normal, but after being in hibernation mode for a while on next usage went into DOS screen and ran progs including CHKDSK on C drive, folder Vista. Seems extra strange to me as I’ve never run on Vista, laptop was originally on XP but was upgraded to W7 since it came out. All settings are default. [PT: May 2012]

@Suzzey: That does seem strange, but even with Vista installed, there isn’t really a folder called “Vista”. So I’m guessing that folder was created within another program’s folder. Probably some basic installation thing. I wouldn’t worry about seeing that exactly.

Did your computer start OK after the chkdsk? [PT: May 2012]

After update my pc is randomly dropping into sleep mode. Having to unplug and restart. [PT: May 2012]

@REGGIE I had the exact same problem as you did! Immediately after the update my internet connection went down and I’m no longer able to connect to the wireless networks. Tried a million different things nothing worked. The trouble shooter says its a firewall setting blocking it all of the sudden but funnily enough I don’t even have the windows firewall or windows defender anymore because it was mysteriously deleted a while back and the third party one I use isn’t blocking anything. Finally did system restore and everything worked fine again at least until the updates ran again and exact same thing happened. Anyone know which update is causing this or how to fix it and possibly keep the updates? Are these updates even really necessary if they’re causing so many issues? I have an option to uninstall the updates individually but windows pops up with so many warnings that I should never uninstall them as they are vital for pc safety and security! Any advice here would be grateful! Oh and also right after the update my windows media player is no longer working and when I try to play my songs in other players they’ll play but are corrupted and sound awful. If anyone finds any fixes to this plz email logjaxbel at Google mail box or gmail dot com thanks! [PT: May 2012]

@micah: Any chance you’re also installing drivers pushed by Windows Update? Those shouldn’t be installing automatically no matter what your settings are, but that might be something to check.

It’s your computer. Uninstall or don’t install whatever you like. It’s up to you. In reality, there’s probably very little real risk to a home user for most of these updates. Regardless, they should be installed if you can. But if you can’t, you can’t. There’s some issue between your specific computer configuration (drivers and software) and at least one of these updates. [PT: May 2012]

..Windows 7 x64, Asus Laptop, May 8 2012 updates prompted for restart. Restarted and was stuck at logon screen “Preparing to configure windows…”. FAIL.
..Booted with X64 disc, ran System Restore, tried three restore points, all ran for a while but said FAILed.
..Rebooted anyway to see if any changes, now stuck at “Please wait…”. logon screen. FAIL.
..Rebooted in Safe Mode, ran System Restore back to 4/27/12. Says completed successfully, rebooted, again stuck at “Please wait…” logon screen. FAIL.
..Microsoft FAIL.
..My Windows 7 x64 desktop has already run the updates, but have not rebooted yet, crossing fingers. [PT: May 2012]

Thank you Microsoft. F-ing update crashed my new HP Pavilion desktop and was stuck on the “Windows Starting” screen…cruel Bill Gates joke because it wasn’t starting. I’m so tired of Msoft that I will probably get a Mac Book…very discouraging to say the least. When I started on the HP backup, it wants 22 discs…may bail on that. Frustration to the max! Thank you again Microsoft for this bogus update/crash patch! [PT: May 2012]

Update, got a logon prompt after doing the following:

1. Power off the PC hard if needed (hold the button, pull the cord, etc.)
2. When you power on the PC it should present you with a Safe Mode screen, Select “Safe Mode with Networking”
3. Log into the PC
4. Go to the Admin Tools “Services” section
5. Locate the following services and disable them: Windows Error Reporting, Network Location Service, Network List service
5B [added myself] If your pc is joined to a domain, unjoin it to WORKGROUP. Tip: When prompted for credentials with Windows 7, you can put “.\administrator” for username to use a local admin account.
6. Power down the PC gracefully (Start, Shutdown, etc.)
7. Restart the PC, wait a minute or two (no more)
8. You should be presented with a login screen.
—- Now I just have to re-enable the services, rejoin, and cross my fingers again. [PT: May 2012]

SMH…I didn’t think this latest windows update would totally crash my laptop! Didn’t think to put them together, lack of trust now! I have a Sony Vaio VGN-NR498E. First screen that pops up is the Windows Error Recovery. Options are Launch start-up repair (recommended), or start windows normally. It will NOT let me chose anything as the keyboard doesn’t seem to register??!! It automatically chooses the first option, then load files…then it gets stuck on the black scrolling bar screen with Microsoft Corporation below it!…WTF..get you sh*t right…people put their whole lives and personal business in their laptops. Glad I didn’t have a major paper due for class!! [PT: May 2012]

Thank you Microsoft for screwing up my perfectly functioning 6-month old HP Pavilion. The recent 5-11-12 update was a crashgate…very bad that MS keeps putting out this garbage and causing problems. If I can ever get it restarted the Autoupdate is going to be “off”. WTF….get it together MS!!! [PT: May 2012]

Windows XP
Installed Update.
Lost both Ethernet and Wireless capabilities.
Prowled the web looking for a solution.
Troubleshot the issue, ran a few fixer programs, even did stupid things like re-installing the modem & wireless drivers.
Nada.
Finally reverted to system restore before Tuesday.
Apparently the updates have to do with vulnerabilities that allow remote access, even through Office.
Advisable to just do a system restore and monitor your network until a fix is created/found. Disable your connection when you’re not using your computer. Pain in the cash, but better to be safe than sorry.

(Post intended for anyone not reading the 500+ comments that are currently on the page at this time. ) [PT: May 2012]

the update crashed my windows 7 pc, wont let me in to setup, doesnt recognize keyboard or mouse, wont boot off of disc either, any thoughts? [PT: May 2012]

@dc: Windows doesn’t control disc booting or core keyboard and mouse recognition. Your hard drive (BIOS) does that. Do you see anything at all when you turn your computer on? [PT: May 2012]

MY WIN 7 MACHINE CRASHED WITH FAILURE TO START AFTER LATEST WINDOWS UPDATES. DELL XPS 8300 I7…… HAD TO ENTER SAFE MODE AND DO SYST. RESTORE!!!!! I NEVER HAD SUCH A MESS WITH XP! I HAVE DISABLED WINDOWS UPDATE NAND WONT USE IT AGAIN UN TIL I GET AN APOLOGY FROM MICROSOFT!!!!!! WAHT A JOKE!!!! [PT: May 2012]

Yes looks like MS really screwed up this time judging from above. After my Vista update 29items it would either stay on loading screen, freeze on loading screen or black screen little activity for hours. Safe mode works so run msconfig to block services and start up progs reboot to normal and work thro until apps and xp work and or id cause, utilising Vistas diagnostic tools and manually allowing services and progs to run few at a time, got majority going to allow DR backups, fault looks like incorrect/corrupted windows updates according to Fix it tool on windows update that itself could not fix butt lacked sufficient info to pinpoint cause. After backup will trash and rebuild OS, might first try uninstall some of the updates if i can. no system restore possible as it seems to have screwed that part to be inop!!!! A huge unnecessary waste and consumer of my time fortunately over the weekend! Dam you MS is this way force customers to Win7/8!! [PT: May 2012]

Last night at 10 pm I went to shut down my Acer laptop with XP and it showed there were updates to install. I let it do it’s thing and this morning it was stuck on installing update 14 of 20. It stuck there with no HDD activity. It finally finished while I wasn’t looking and shut down at about 3 pm today. Sounds like Microsoft better update their update. [PT: May 2012]

I had the same problem with the updates installing and then when the computer restarted later it hung on the “Starting Windows” screen and then just turned itself off. I was upset to say the least and thought it was the kids fault at first but after going through the hassle of restoring to an earlier restore point I realize it was microsofts faulty patches. I am trying to figure which one it is so that this doesn’t happen again because it took two days to fix it.

To fix it I had to shut down the system and then I restarted it then said yes to the error recovery (this told me it was unable to fix the problem), I then started it back up after another hard shutdown then restarted again and told it to start windows normally. It started and then hung up again on the starting windows screen this time I let it shut down and just waited after about ten minutes it went to the log in screen. Now it wants to update the computer however if you look at the update history it shows them as being downloaded. I am planning on loading each one and then restarting till I find the one or ones that are causing this mess.

Also to those who say that an update can’t cause hardware failure is dead wrong. Back in the day late 90’s I installed a patch for a game and it set the refresh rate on my monitor so high that it made a high pitch whine and fried literaly before by eyes. It was an older monitor that couldn’t take that setting but still it can and does happen. That is why I assume they list hardware requirements on software packages. [PT: May 2012]

After 11 May 2012 update I have lost all sound and videos(youtube) are extremely choppy. Microsoft media player doesn’t work at all. No test tone when troubleshooting sound issue. Everything worked fine on 10 May. I’m buying a Mac, screw Microsoft. [PT: May 2012]

After the updates installed on the weekend of May 11 2012. Several users at our office running Lenovo T420 laptop w/ Windows 7 64bit have issues with Excel 2010. They received the followinf error “Excel cannot complete this task with available resources” After trouble shooting Exccel for issues with no fix. I had to uninstall the most resent Office Excel 2010 security update. This has fixed the issue for now. [PT: May 2012]

I have 4 Windows 2008 Servers now that has was reported running slow on 05/10/2012. I rebooted and seem to be working/ I came in this morning and got messages from the location sites of these severs that they still running slow. Dose anyone have a solution to this or just to uninstall the last update? I need help here. Thanks [PT: May 2012]

Have Mac with Office 4….after the latest update Excel would not open some of my Excel files….any others experiencing same problem?? [PT: May 2012]

The May 8 updates really screwed up my laptop.

It totally changed all the settings on Firefox, reset my profile to ‘new’.

It erased all the folder settings I had painstakingly made to see folders in ‘document view’, changed the taskbar, view, appearance, and of course, Microsoft doesn’t let you save these settings, so when this happens again (and it will, it’s not the first time!) I won’t be able to simply change my settings back to my preferences.

MICROSOFT and their arbitrary changes, SUCK [PT: May 2012]

Had to restore back to May 9. Windows 7 laptop went insane. Windows kept opening up without any reason, pointer went berserk and could not be used at all, some windows opened inside the task bar???? (weird looking), all videos were choppy right after the windows update, but the whole computer really was fubar by 5/14/12, so I restored back to 5/9, and everything is ok….so far. [PT: May 2012]

Running a DLink wireless 802.11n router to connect Droid & iPhone smartphones, a Sony PS 3, Dell XPS workstation with XP and a Dell Studio 17 laptop with Windows 7 to the Internet via AT&T Uverse. After Windows updates were applied in May 2012, only the laptop lost Internet access. All other devices have not been affected. Through IPConfig, I do not see the gateway address on the Windows 7 laptop. Restoring is only a temporary solution.

I have verified that the laptop is connecting to the DLink router, and even to the AT&T Uverse wireless router/cable modem, but no Internet access available to it. When I restored to an earlier version of the OS, it temporarily works until the critical security update(s) are applied. If you have solved this problem (tried flushing and registering DNS, release and renew connections), would love your input. Restoring is only a temporary solution, [PT: May 2012]

@Ted2005: You could try restoring the Windows Firewall settings to the default policy. [PT: May 2012]

I got the May update Thursday/Friday/Saturday and Sunday. And after each update I get the BSOD and have had to back out the updates with a system restore. I’ve tried to disable auto updates but it won’t let me. I can’t wait to set up my new MAC- and then I’m kissing MS good bye for good! [PT: May 2012]

Windows update on Sat May 12 afterward, windows 7 would not start up properly. tried manually downloading and installing only critical updates, same problem. Had to restore to May 9. Now everything is fine. Thanks MICRO$$$OFT, for all the time and trouble you caused ! [PT: May 2012]

THANKS! This patch crashed my netbook and i was forced to restore, I’m an author and i lost part of my book, why would you release something like this?!! [PT: May 2012]

i have same prob as 486 and i have done what mentioned in 487 and i have same prob in every browser any help please goig out of my mind [PT: May 2012]

Update removed my administrator profile (inactive) and made a general profile active. When I went into my profile settings and selected my profile from the list, it only gives me the option to DELETE. I cannot make it active. No access to documents, photos, videos, etc. I had to do a system restore, and now I’m terrified to try it again. [PT: May 2012]

They failed all of them!!!!
An removed my Security Essentials!!!!

An they wont uninstall, I am hosed…… [PT: May 2012]

Using DHCP and lost your network connectivity?

Check the DHCP client service. It may have been “Disabled” by the May 8 patches.
If so, go to:
Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services.
Double-click DHCP Client Service
Change Startup Type to Automatic
Click Apply
Click Start
Click OK

There may be other network-related settings silently molested during these updates. However, this is the only one I had trouble with.

I booted up our external Windows Server 2003 SP2 VM in VirtualBox as I always do once or twice a week to retrieve WSUS and Symantec updates for our isolated, internal networks. Last successful boot was last Thu for the 8 May patches. Today I could connect to nothing but the VBox host (Fedora Linux) had no problems. After ruling out VBox and a lot of Googling and testing I discovered that the DHCP client service had been silently disabled. No one else touches this VM and it has not been booted up since retrieving updates last week. The MS patches have to be the culprit.

Only these 5 patches were installed last week. One of them is responsible:

KB2604078 – MS12-035: .NET 1.1
KB2659262 – MS12-034: Security update
KB2676562 – MS12-034: Security update
KB2686509 – MS12-034: Security update
KB2695962 – MS12-???: Update Rollup for ActiveX Killbits

Kind Regards,

Cal Webster [PT: May 2012]

Just a short follow-up to my previous comment regarding DHCP failure. The comment box allowed only 2000 characters.

There was nothing in the Windows Update descriptions or Security bulletins mentioning DHCP. No warnings during or after installation. No Event Log errors, warnings, or information messages giving a hint of what had occurred.

I have circulated a notice to our internal sysadmins warning of this issue. Two of our internal networks include Win2k3 AD domains that use DHCP for the workstations. I’m not yet sure if this issue will affect them but I imagine I’ll find out soon after the updates have been rolled out from our internal WSUS servers.

Although this was one of the more frustrating Windoze hiccups I’ve had to resolve, I won’t dive into a rant. There’s enough of that here and it doesn’t solve anything. I hope this small contribution is helpful to someone experiencing similar issues.

Thanks to Tim Fisher for maintaining this blog and for his very professional responses to all the frustrated Windoze victims.

Have a great day!

Cal Webster [PT: May 2012]

@Cal Webster: Thanks for the contributions, Cal. Much appreciated. [PT: May 2012]

Latest May 2012 updates messed up all my USB connections. Windows 7 loses connection to flash drives half way through copying files.
Had no choice but to restore and ignore the updates until I can identify which update is the problem.
Once again MS have jumped into the water before testing it. [PT: May 2012]

The may 2012 updates caused my computer to experience deadlocks shortly after logging into windows. Had to drop into safe mode and recover. Took a loot at the boot log and found that most of my drivers were failing to load after the update, including my CPU driver. Running fine again after the restore. Hate it when this happens, but at least I’m better off than some of the other commentors [PT: May 2012]

Thankfully , my system is still usable, sort of , touch wood .
11 updates loaded but 8 didn’t , and error code 641 is the result .
Amazing how little info Microsoft provides re 641 to help in situations like this. [PT: May 2012]

The security update for Word specifically caused severe lag on Win 7 Pro 64bit machines running Office 2003 in trying to open DOC files over the network.

Manually uninstalling fixes the lag issue. [PT: May 2012]

Upon restart after the update, my laptop looks as if it’s booting normally but after it shows windows booting then it goes to a blank black screen and shows the mouse arrow. NOTHING else. So when I tried to do a system restore, it just goes back to the black screen. Any ideas would be wonderful as my daughter relies on this laptop for her homeschooling. [PT: May 2012]

@Stacey: I’d try a Startup Repair next. [PT: May 2012]

Sony Vaio Z51WG ‘09 machine, 7 ultimate

Rebooted on the 8th of May and it remained on the ‘Starting Windows’ screen. System repair couldn’t fix, system restore didn’t . Very very annoyed. I initially thought this may be due to PGP’s Whole Disk Encryption so spent 5 days decrypting it offline..
Then tried Safe Mode, noticed AVG seemed to be causing a hang, renamed all the AVG drivers, still didn’t boot. Eventually, after trying the ’sfc /scannow etc etc’ fixes, it eventually booted. Various things, including Event Viewer no longer worked. So yesterday I performed an upgrade install of Windows 7 SP1 and it was working ok. Until Automatic Updates ran…. And here we are again, hung on the ‘Starting Windows’ screen. System Restore hasn’t helped.

Why the f#ck has Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, removed the ability to do a repair/upgrade install via booting from the DVD? Used to be able to do so in XP… You can only run a repair install once booted to the OS. Which is great if the machine actually boots to the OS.

But hey.. New Mac Book Pro being launched soon. I’m not keen on Apple and I love my Vaio but after this fiasco.. I’m seriously considering that MBP. [PT: May 2012]

The APRIL/MAY 2012 MS updates have created a mess for me too.

Like many other people here have experienced, my Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS freezes after booting into desktop, with a black screen and unresponsive mouse or keyboard.

After some digging in (with MSCONFIG selective startup, boot logging reviews and Sysinternals Autoruns startup-apps inspections), I found the culprit is the MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS app.

If MSE’s real-time protection is enabled, it causes Windows to freeze for a long time after boot. If the real-time protection is disabled, Windows boots normally.

Now, this wasn’t a problem till around a month ago, and during my investigation, I am not aware of any other app or driver that could cause MSE to conflict with Windows in such a drastic and ridiculous manner.

The dilemma is that I like MSE’s superb protection, and its usual unobtrusive monitoring. It also works well along with Avast, MBAM and Winpatrol, so I am loathe to relegate it to a secondary on-demand scanner.

My suspicion is some Windows updates caused this MSE issue, since this problem started occurring suddenly, but I am in no mood to dig up the offending Windows update out of hundreds of working (and essential) patches. I would rather wait for a few months for Microsoft to issue a fix for that broken Windows update.

To summarise…
SOLUTION FOR BLACK SCREEN FREEZE AFTER WIN7 BOOTUP:
Turn off MSE’s real-time protection, in its Settings panel!!!
Alternatively, maybe someone can dig up that borked Windows update and help Microsoft to patch a patch, for a permanent solution. [PT: May 2012]

I use Windows XPSP3 . Last night I applied the patches for May’12. The systme asked me to restart. When I restarted the computer, the system hangs after BIOS check.. How to solve? [PT: May 2012]

@S Krishnaswany: This is a confusing area to be locked up in because it’s hard to tell if the POST is complete. If not, this isn’t a Windows Update issue but a BIOS or hardware problem. If so, then there could be a very serious boot issue that honestly, I’d be surprised an update caused. Have you tried booting to the Windows XP disc and trying a Repair Install? [PT: May 2012]

Ref 486:

This update from 9/10 May has resulted in my Hardrive being corruped and files destroyed. In addition to this the computer crashed.

In total this windows update has cost me £145 todate. Thanks Microsoft. [PT: May 2012]

Bit of an update.

The laptop has a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD/Sata drive. Not sure if thats part of the issue

Fresh Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 installed, not an upgrade.
No Sony drivers loaded yet or other software.

Windows update ran (71 patches) , first reboot fine, under 30 seconds
Windows Update then installed IE9 and KB971033 only.
That reboot took 20 minutes to get to the login screen.
Final patch was .Net securty fixes, 5 minutes to boot.

Subsequent reboot back to 30 seconds
(and the same with the next 5…)

At least this time System Restore is creating restore points before installing the patches, it wasn’t doing so with the upgrade install I performed yesterday. If the reboot times start to get longer, I think the first step will be uninstalling KB971033

Fingers crossed, its back to normal [PT: May 2012]

I have this kind of similar problem that my laptop had been crashing randomly, BSOD randomly, shutting down without any warning or notice. I thought many reasons that occur in my laptop similarly like : overheating problem, out of date graphics card driver, badsector in hard disk, RAM problem.

My Laptop Specs :

MSI EX-465
4GB RAM
SiS Chipset
ATI Radeon Mobility 5470
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

I troubleshoot all of my hardware and download the latest drivers of my laptop but still my laptop had the same situation, it still crash. but i found out that there are also people who got the problem after updating the “net framework” May 9 2012 update. so itry to uninstall the update, and for making sure, I also system restored my laptop. and my laptop returned to its original behavior. its not crashing anymore, I’m thinking maybe some of the update of the “net framework” is conflicting some of my hardware. so I have no choice, I’ll just wait for another update then. I hope it could be better and could not harm my laptop in the next update. I hope other reads this comment and can help other people out there who exactly experience the same with me. I hope this could fix that. Microsoft. [PT: May 2012]

Have a dell inspiron 530 with Vista. After May 9th updates computer would not startup. Tried to restore and was unsuccessful. Had to reinstall and having trouble. Major problems after 12 updates. [PT: May 2012]

i use chrome and can’t deal with it taking so long to open a browser every time i dowload some updates.

well i got scared so i downloaded 75 patches. guess what they took a couple and i mean 3 hours to download and then install.

now chromes browser takes a while to open. i just hope that chrome fixes itself because its the reason why i switched from IE.

sorry to hear about those computers freezing.

guess i was lucky! [PT: May 2012]

I had a personal email from a reader that confirmed that one of the MS Office updates causes Excel to revert to much older resource limits. Specifically, you might get errors about “not enough resources” when sorting very large sheets, like those over 100K rows. Rolling back the update solves the problem. [PT: May 2012]

Last night I did the new Windows update via the auto updater. Once the update was complete the little yellow Icon in the tray went out, then moments later it came back on. I figured ok, more updates but as they were being downloaded I noticed they were the same 3 files. So I guessed that it must not have patched everything ok and did it again. When I turned off my computer off it showed me the 3 updates were being updated to my computer. Now this morning the little yellow Icon is on again and once again wants me to upload the same 3 files? Is something wrong? [PT: May 2012]

Viking

I got exactly the same problem so you are not alone. The three updates wanting to be installed over and over again are:

Security Update for .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 and windows XP x86 (KB2518864)

Security Update for Microsfot .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 and windows XP x86 (KB2572073)

Security Update for Microsfot .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 and windows XP x86 (KB2633880)

am I right?

I am running Windows XP on my HP workstation at work. I have to say at this point, that 7/10 times, whenever there is an update that involves .NET Framework it runs into some issues.

I have tried to instal these updates 2 times in a row and every time I restart my machine it would say that the same three updates are ready to be installed. The annoying bit is that if I want to shut down my computer it will try to install these updates. [PT: May 2012]

Viking and anybody who got the problem with the 3 updates ready to install over and over again

I found a solution to this problem if you run Win Xp on your machine as I do. To get rid of the three updates do the following:
1. Click on Windows Update icon in your Startup menu, this will fire up Internet Explorer and take you to the Windows Update website
2. You will see there the three updates which you already downloaded and which request to be installed all the time
2. Tick the box next to the option which says something like ‘hide/don’t show this update anymore’ next to each of these updates

Done. The yellowish windows update notification icon from your taskbar will disappear and the three annoyiing updates will stop from requesting to be installed over and over again.

If you wish to get rid of the three (or other ones) downloaded updates from you hard drive, follow instructions which I found This guidance will tell you how to empty two of the folders in your Windows folder where updates are downloaded and stored. [PT: May 2012]

Rafal, that box is greyed out so you cannot hide the updates.

Any other tips,
thanks. [PT: May 2012]

I downloaded the May 22. 2012 update with live update, and clicked install. I thought that it was odd that it never asled for a restart, and now I notice that the yellow live update icon won’t gp awau, or more precisely, it keeps coming bacl. I have repeatedly clicked on both the express, and custom install options, and each time ot seems to install for a minute or two and the yellow icon disappears for about 30 seconds, but then it comes back asking to install again. I cannot ger the icon to go away. I have tried cancelling the install, unchecking all the boxes, disabling live update then reenabling, but nothing makes the luve update icon go away. I am running XP on an HP laptop. [PT: May 2012]

Mike, that is really strange.

When I run it, and chose the Custom option to decide which updates to install I could see all three updates there like if they were ready for download and installation.

Then, there is a tick bock beneath each and every update which says ‘Don’t show this update again’

I was able to tick it and it solved the problem.

I really don’t know what else you can do assuming that you have the same problem as described by Viking and myself above.

Anybody else could help us with this? [PT: May 2012]

Rafal, I assume because they are high priority updates you cannot hide them. Using XP, have now got them installed 3 times each but still cannot get rid of updates ready yellow icon. Go to change or remove progs and they are not listed as being installed. Go to updates and they are in update history. Come on M.S. SORT IT OUT please. Are you using XP? [PT: May 2012]

I, too, am having exactly the same problem. Endless attempts to re-install themselves (our little yellow friend), a “successful” report at the end of each installation yet no sign of them in “Add/Remove Programs”. Clearly a Microsoft-originating problem. [PT: May 2012]

@Nick, @Rafal, @mike, @updated: I don’t see a lot of Windows Update problems (sometimes I wish I did so I could help more on specific issues) but when I do, they are always always always .NET updates that are the cause. I don’t know why they’re such a problem but I cringe when I see them, which is just about every month. I even recently had this exact issue you are all describing when installing updates on a clean install of Windows 7. In that situation, my solution was to install the .NET updates together. In other words, install .NET 3.5 updates together and then restart, then v4 together and restart, etc. Same would apply to v2 I’d suppose. Not sure why this helps (though I can theorize of course) but it does.

So I’d suggest trying that if you can.

If you’re in a situation where you can’t, or it just doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, you could always try uninstalling .NET Framework (whatever version), restarting, installing a clean version from Microsoft, then trying to patch with whatever comes up via Windows Update.

You can get to all the .NET versions here. [PT: May 2012]

Tim, as there are only 3 updates, do you mean install them one at a time? Like precise instructions or literal logic!
Thanks,Mike [PT: May 2012]

@mike: If it’s only three, hell, do them one at a time! If I had the time, I’d always do that. [PT: May 2012]

It appears that applying them one-at-a-time won’t help.
After each update completes (code=19 [success]) in the eventlog), the same update is immediately downloaded again (code=17 [ready]) in the eventlog).
AFAICT the reason is that – unlike other updates – upon completion these do not create an entry [in Add/Remove programs] for each associated KB.

I’ve installed these on my XP system 3 times today and gave up after doing the shutdown (install updates) options, restarting and seeing them popup again after first trying the normal way, and then the website.

Same issue on Windows Server 2003.

Same problems as described above in multiple posts. Have tried it on Dell laptop and an HP pavillion with same result—keeps trying to reload the updates and icon comes back….a real pain! Anyone got a solution?

I went to the MS update site…hit custom. It came up with no updates and the icon disappeared! Too weird

I don’t have a real solution but I do have a way to stop the loop.

Note: (597) [above] tells how to do this if the updates have not already downloaded [so the "hide" option on the Windows update site is still available]. The following tells how to get the same result using the GUI on a system where updates have already been download.

1. Click on the gold shield to open the update program and select
(.) Custom

2. Clear the [ ] check boxes from all all update.

3. Set the option [x] Do not show these updates again.

When you hit [OK] the update process will end. The Windows update site will show the updates as successfully installed, so they will not download again.

Steve, I did that earlier and nothing happened. Just tried it again and the 3 updates have gone. Well done. Only problem now is the 3 updates are installed 4 times on update history, with no way of deleting them. All I can think of is when I first installed them, the box that said updates done just said close and not as usual please restart your computer. So the update history or register did not recognize that the updates had been installed. Anyway icon gone and now free to fix the next problem.

I had the same problem. Thought it was installed, but kept on getting redone, over and over again, and never appeared in the control panel as installed like it should have…..though it showed installed ok on the website. I clicked on the Custom icon, and simply kept all 3 checked to install, and then pressed install. The next screen said it couldn’t install them, and my icon was gone in the tray, and my shut down screen no longer had the extra install things attached to it. I rebooted just now, and it all seems ok yet……..thank God.

Same here with old XP machine. Tried one at a time, too, with the same result, even after reboot. Thought at first a way to nudge us to Windows 7, but I see they’re having worse difficulties. Do the custom install, uncheck all and check box not to notify. It went away for me after that. Good luck to all!