Patch Tuesday May 2013: 10 Updates Correcting 32 Issues

only ticked Malicious Software and it installed. Restarted and PC is bricked. It restored multiple times but won’t recover. November updates had caused problems as above, so I cautiously accepted just the Malicous Software Removal Update. Acer, Win 7, McAfee, nvidia.

Am about to restore to 2011 image

Sent from my iPad cos othong else runs. [PT: December 2012]

After dec 11′ 13 critical update, ATI 6850 works on initial Windows startup screen, then blanks out screen and fails to load after rest of startup. Left with dead blank screen, but Win 7 appears to have loaded. Computer boots to safe mode with graphics. Device manager indicates video card already has current driver. [PT: December 2012]

I have never had an issue with a patch update until the Dec 2012 one. This one froze several times, and has crashed my computer twice. While I appreciate the track record, it isn’t like Microsoft is going to spot me computer repair service to fix any potential issues from multiple crashes. So…I’m not very happy right now. [PT: December 2012]

It took several power cycles before my laptop would actually boot (I disconnected it from everything and then gradually added my peripherals back).

Now the colors on my external monitor are all off. Buttons look wrong and fields are not always clear. Suggestions? [PT: December 2012]

@Lorrie: Check the connection first, just in case. Also, it’s possible that an updated video driver got installed, though those should be optional and only selectable for install by you. Regardless, you can look at the update history in Windows Update and see if something like that got installed. If so, try uninstalling it or even updating the driver from your laptop manufacturer. [PT: December 2012]

After installed on my laptop it wouldn’t connect to the internet; it connects to my network just not the internet. It also wouldn’t recognize my AV software. I had to re-flash it with a clone I did of my hard drive last month and now it’s updated again and telling me to restart. What a PITA. [PT: December 2012]

This patch Tuesday (12/11/2012) is a disaster. Obviously MSFT (i think their India development center) did not test it thoroughly. It completely ruined my desktop: the machine became extremely slow. Cannot restore. Safe mode is slow. cannot restore either. [PT: December 2012]

I am SCREWED!!! The darn machine performed a background update overnight and now I can’t get anything to work. Every single screen FREEZES!!! I have conference calls in about 2 hours and I cannot prepare for anything as needed. This is THE WORST update ever. I have rebooted my machine approximately 5 times in hopes of some sense of normalcy to return – NOTHING! I have to reboot each time now just to CLOSE out of programs that are open because once they are opened, the windows somehow switch to “ghost” mode. Can’t force them to quit, and they are only active when they first open up.

NOT an ideal way as a business owner to start the friggin’ day. I can say MSOFT SUCKS today. Whoever called themselves testing this crap needs to be FIRED!!! This is a sizeable cost when thinking of lost manning to resolve when there are critical meetings coming up, along with lost work hours!!!!!!!!!!!

NOT PLEASED! [PT: December 2012]

Updates crashed my computer dell vostro running vista. thankfully computer restore came into action and saved the day.

This happens nearly every time i Use updater. Now I going to wait a month and then update as it seems to work then.

any idea wtf is happening lol? [PT: December 2012]

I have a Dell Inspiron Desktop and when the updatesare applied, it shuts off my keyboard to where I can’t type to log in. I thought it was a keyboard issue so I switched to the Dell Keyboard from my Steel Series Keyboard and still won’t let me type to log in. Now the computer will not let me access Sysytem Repair when I reboot the computer. [PT: December 2012]

Vista recently installed new patches. Upon reboot (I was sleeping and never saw it) i appear to be stuck in Windows update” configuration hell. The computer just reboots over and over (even after I try to get it into safe mode) and I get the error message that windows “update did not configure properly. Windows is reverting to last configuration.” I can not get past this. I have hard shut down and keyed F8 during boot up but still get stuck in this never ending wheel. Suggestions? My data is backed up on a separate hard drive but I do not have a windows disk or anything? [PT: December 2012]

@Mikek – Philly: If you tried everything here, I’d do a Startup Repair next. [PT: December 2012]

My Toshiba Portege running Windows 7 on an Intel Core2 Duo crashed several times after installing the 10 important updates from Microsoft on 12/11/2012. System Restore to prior to those updates seems to have corrected the problem for now. [PT: December 2012]

Same problem here, which is why I’m on here looking for fixes. My HP with Win7 was shutting down last night & decided to do updates first. Went to turn it on & went right to Startup Repair Mode…check or repairs for a long time…no fix. Diagnostics Manager screen came up, tried to restore to previous update….Error. I am so mad right now. It’s stuck in the same loop. Hope they can help fix this one. [PT: December 2012]

The update made several websites slow and prevented log-ins, some others ok. When scrolling by keypad it would freeze and I would have to use the sidebar to continue. I used system restore to go back 2 days before this “marvellous” update was issued. [PT: December 2012]

Hi there, i don’t normally look for this item on the web, but after the patch my gaming became very slow, I had static sound coming out of the speakers and very slow to start up, now i keep getting a critical error saying, that I have a problem with ( Graphics not compatible), not sure if this is something that happen to anyone else but just seems strange that it happened to me after the patch update, ty nice blog [PT: December 2012]

I look after about 25 computers (XP, Vista and Win 7) and almost all of them have had overnight reboots on 3 consecutive days (dec 11,12,13-14). Several systems running Windows 7-64bit no longer backup correctly in WHS 2011. Noticed problems with missing notification area icons on older XP systems. Someone certainly dropped the ball on the Dec 2012 PT. [PT: December 2012]

Oh dear, this update quite messed up my system (W7 64). Every single application stopped responding, when i wanted to print. Especially Office applications foun several other opportunitys to hang themselves.

A Restoring Point prior to this bad Update did it for me (for now it seems). Thanks for the hint!

Greetings Mo. [PT: December 2012]

Dec 2012 update – multiple problems with multiple clients. Too busy to get into detail… FAIL!!! [PT: December 2012]

Since the last update, I’m having a very difficult time with viewing folder contents. I typically like to view thunbnails since a lot of what I do is graphical. Now, the thumbnails won’t display and explorer keeps freezing, preventing some folders from ever opening (Not Internet Explorer, but the windows explorer). I’m running Win 7 and this is the first update that has given me issues. [PT: December 2012]

@Anita: Try system file checker. Here’s how: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/sfc-scannow.htm [PT: December 2012]

HP Pavilion dm4, running windows 7. Since the update, funky behavior in multiple browsers… in chrome, facebook has multiple errors (notifications are text only on top of other areas of the page, chat doesn’t display at all or breaks profile images, same with ticker.) facebook is fine in IE, but 1. who wants to use IE and 2. then amazon and other sites are broken — missing links (like the add to cart button — not like you need that 2 weeks before xmas!). Ugghhh! FAIL [PT: December 2012]

My computer restarted and got stuck at the startup screen.

This is two computers Windows 7 (64bit) I am responsible for which the updates caused this issue. Both are laptoips. One is a Toshiba and one is a HP.

I am curious of there is a conflict only with the update or if there is also a correlation between the antivirus program the computer is running. Both of mine are running McAfee.

Please let me know if yours are as well or some other or none. Thanks, [PT: December 2012]

@Snedman: If I were you, I’d do a System Restore. Once the computer(s) is running again, disable McAfee and install the updates. See this for some more thoughts. [PT: December 2012]

Okay, wth happened? My computer did this update before shutting down the other day and now when I tried logging on, it says there was some sort of error and to try restart. Well, my HP laptop couldn’t do that. It suggested restore option. I did that and it restored my computer to the way it was before this bloody update. Hopefully there will be a fix for this ‘fix’. I need the folks and MSOFT to do something about it and fast. Updates are supposed to help, not hurt. [PT: December 2012]

What the….! I always thought updates were to help and improve our working system. Since the last update some of my software will not accept or display any Adobe Fonts just True Type fonts only. In my industry I use both type of fonts to create various signage for customers. I would like to keep using the Adobe Fonts as they are not cheap to buy.
If I use Adobe fonts they will not display on the monitor but they still exist in the font folder….! Even if I call up and existing file where Adobe fonts were used they no longer are visable…..?
Tried a system restore and yes that works perfectly but then my system goes and uploads the lastest window update when I go to shut the system down to only have the same problem again.
Come on Mr. Windows I need this problem Fixed ASAP…….NOT HAPPY…..!!! [PT: December 2012]

windows 7 update installed on 12/14. Internet connection is not working for facebook ONLY. All other websites seem fine. I did a system restore to pre-update and was able to access facebook. Updates reinstalled last night and now I can’t acces facebook again. The message is “IE cannot display the website” I choose “diagnose connection and it reports that the network connection is bad or modem is broken. Obviously this is not true as I am using that connection to write this comment.
Any Ideas? [PT: December 2012]

@mb40: Very strange! Try clearing the entire cache and then any Facebook related cookies. If that doesn’t do it, try Facebook in another browser. You need to determine where this problem is happening. If it does work in another browser, head back to the original one and try clearing/defaulting any security settings. [PT: December 2012]

Update killed my internet in IE 9 ,had to restore several times until i realized it was one of the new updates ,disabled them for now and its working fine.Mine is a Lenovo tower pc [PT: December 2012]

Well, every time i turn the volume up,plug something into the usb port, or turn the brightness up on my laptop, it goes into hibernation. Even when i turn it on i have to wiggle the mouse to wake it up from it’s hibernation at every step. Worse update i’ve ever seen. [PT: December 2012]

my windows 7 starter laptop had problems adjusting to the recent updates but got going again all on its own. my XP will not start in any mode of any kind after the Windows update. It always goes to a blue screen that asks me to do things that aren’t options at any point during the boot up or BIOS screen processes. HELP!!!!! [PT: December 2012]

@Scott: You probably need to do a System Restore which, since you can’t access Windows directly, will need to be done via booting to your Windows disc. That lets you do a restore from “outside” of Windows, hopefully allowing you to access Windows normally again. [PT: December 2012]

Dell Inspiron XP. Another windows update that locks me out of the Internet. Says I’m connected, but all browsers say no. Tried all my
usual tricks, not working this time. Looks
Ike I have to drive to GeekSquad again. Major Fail Microsoft. [PT: December 2012]

with the latest update for windows 7, i’ve noticed lots of random unicodes everywhere ( like every comment from a different user would have a random triangle question mark unicode symbol lodged somewhere between the spaces in their comments- – sentences). Another awesome thing to include would be websites not loading because of damn unicodes messing up the html or something like that. Flash players take like 5 minutes to start up as well. [PT: December 2012]

Any suggestions to those of us who are stuck in this startup/reboot cycle? I’ve tried everything suggested and the problem seems to be worsening. I used to be able to get to a screen that displayed a “3 of 3″ updates at 0% and now I don’t even get that. Can’t do a system restore, tried every possible start option (safe modes, revert, normal, etc.) and nothing is working. This latest updated has rendered my desktop unusable! (Vista). I now keep getting a blue screen of death prompt telling me “registry cannot load the hive (file)” … aaaaaiiiiiieeeeee! Please tell me you know of a fix. I do not want to try to go to MS to prove to them that one of their updates completely screwed my computer, cause that’s what I feel like needs to be done. Do they even recognize the issues and damage they’ve done by sending out these faulty updates? [PT: December 2012]

Well, I will tell you that regularly after any update from MS things start to work differently and sometimes do not work well at all. An example in my case is that after upgrading to IE10, it looks like both the 32 and 64 BIT versions of IE are the same. That used to be different. Now that is OK if MS wants to change how they do things, but at least they should advise customers. Now as a consequence, this time I was so tired to try to get it to work well, that i moved to GOOGLE CHROME which I determine from my own experience of the last few days:
1. Consume less RAM
2. Is faster
3. Does everything that IE was doing

So why stick with a browser like IE? I frankly see no reason at all, and I am not going to move back in the short while.

That is the price MS has to pay for not advising customer comprehensively on changes they surprise us with: they will lose customers to competition.

Regards, Roger [PT: December 2012]

Dell laptop totally crashed takes 45mins to boot, was perfect before the wiindows updates, not happy [PT: December 2012]

Dell Studio, Win7, McAfee (but not after subscription finishes). Updates have prolonged start up (15+ minutes) then after safe mode wants to run chkdsk then eventually starts up then tells me that my copy of Windows 7 is not legit! Windows 7 came with the Dell. How do I convince the system that my Windows 7 is legit? [PT: December 2012]

@Wayne: Your best bet is probably to contact Dell. They should be able to help you clear up the activation issue. [PT: December 2012]

Oh wow, at least im the only one having problems. My machine have been running like crap since the latest update, freezes for like 5-15 minutes once every hour. Microsoft suck. [PT: December 2012]

In the last week 2 of my computers crashed, because of a critical update. One I was able to restore, the other one needs windows 7 operating system reinstalled. Who is going to pay for that. I talked with windows and they act like nothing is going on, but I have been searching around and noticing many people with the same problems. The computer I restored is working perfectly, but I am scared to allow updates. I just bought this computer and I do not want anything to happen to it. I am wondering if someone found out the exact update that is causing this so I can avoid that update. [PT: December 2012]

This patch has loaded twice now and has crashed my PC both times. It removes all the drivers except the keyboard and Mouse. Cannot connect to my router or use I.E. Did you test this before release? [PT: December 2012]

after I update i cant connect to internet. I have to restore my com then its no problem to connect, any thing I can do? i have windows 7. when I try to fix it it say its my security or firewall settings? I dont know what to do. [PT: December 2012]

I’ve got a Dell Optiplex 745 that runs for awhile and then the monitor appears to go to sleep. In actuality, the system has just blinked off. Started last week Thursday, 12/13.
This morning, it will not even get to the login screen.
XP SP3, w/ auto Windows Update overnight, and an Intel graphics chipset.
it boots fine in Safe Mode, runs fine in VGA mode. [PT: December 2012]

@Barbs: Unfortunately, Windows XP isn’t nearly as adept at recovering from things like this as newer versions of Windows are. You’re probably going to need to do a repair install. However, since you can get into Safe Mode, you might want to try to run a malware scan as well as try system file checker. Give System Restore a try too. [PT: December 2012]

Hi all,
I am sick & tired of all this nonsense, the 11th December ‘security’ patches have made my HP TouchSmart 600 unstable (win 7 home premium, 64-bit)
I have experienced problems with never-ending re-booting, three sys restores and in a very similar scenario as @Snedman:
Win + McAfee’s updates almost simultaneously, at first I suspected McAfee as the culprit, then thought it was Micro (by all means!)soft
NOW I believe they both plotted to make people’s life miserable! What a disgrace, now I seem to be OK, McAfee is happy… but the whole story is not ideal for some1 with very low level of patience.
H E L P (Tim or whoever please)
I now have the win update telling me that ONE more update MS12-078 – Critical must be downloaded and installed. I am terrified about doing that and restarting the machine, rather wait for Maya’s prophecy to prove itself true this Friday but if there will be no end of this world, what shall I do to prevent the end of ‘my world’?
Thanks, Marcus VS [PT: December 2012]

@VonScheffer: If I were you, I’d restart my computer just to clean out memory and get a clean boot. Then disable McAfee. Then install the update and restart. If you’re paranoid, you can manually create a restore point in System Restore prior to all of this. [PT: December 2012]

I tried to unistall these updates and remove all necesary service. I didn’t manage to rezolve my problem. WINDOWS HANDS WITH 0 % CPU. WINDOWS SUCKS! [PT: December 2012]

Latest update (One critical 5 optional) 12.20.12 caused my internet connection to no longer work. System restore to prior time of install all worked again like a charm. [PT: December 2012]

well this is weird, every time i turn my pc i get a hard disk failure message but when i chkdsk for errors theirs none to be found ;\… any ideas?

ps. my pc works as if it was brand new [PT: December 2012]

@Juan: Chckdsk isn’t the most thorough tool but that message may not be particularly accurate either. Do you think this is related to the Patch Tuesday releases? If not, post about in my forum and someone can help. [PT: December 2012]

I had problems with the December 2012 updates too. Ever since I installed them, I no longer have the option to put my computer in sleep or hibernate mode–or log in as another user. Plus my keyboard is acting funny. Seriously MS? How do I fix this? [PT: December 2012]

Ever since the update, things will work fine for a few minutes. Then Chrome will flip out and start having issues, until it eventually crashes. Then, I won’t be able to start it up again. Or start task manager, or any other application until I restart my computer. Using Windows 8. [PT: December 2012]

The automatic updates just installed on my system and after the reboot I could not get passed the welcome screen. Required a restore and I have turned off the auto update feature. [PT: December 2012]

After the updates 2 windows 7 computers on my network willnot talk beck and forth. The 2nd computer sees the 1st but the 1st(server) can’t see the 2nd one and the printer sharing does not work from the server since the printers are hooked to the 2nd computer. I have checked everything I know to check and gone thru the norton settings but nothing seems to be out of place. Help please. Thanks, Glenn. [PT: December 2012]

I took the December updates for my Vista laptop and it froze during the start-up afterward. I did a restore and will block updates from windows until I fine which was responsible. [PT: December 2012]

Been working on my girlfriend’s HP Pavilion dv4.

I was forced to do a system restore (in safe mode) since windows would not load past the home loading screen.

Once restored everything went back to working “great”.

However windows did another update in my absence…back to square one.

Does anyone know what the offending update is and if there is solution? [PT: December 2012]

My computer can no longer connect to the internet since my recent windows update. I read another post about internet adaptors being removed. Anyone know how to resolve? HELP [PT: December 2012]

I’m on Windows 7 and had to restore aswell this happened twice after downloading this update [PT: December 2012]

this is the second time a windows update has crashed me, first time was just before christmas, i believe my comp installed it on 12/23.

it caused BSOD error codes all saying my graphics card needed to be updated, i did everything i could, updates, uninstalled and reinstalled drivers etc until it dawned on me that a windows update had occurred just before the issues started, so backed the comp up to just before the updates and all was well….UNTIL

yesterday morning my comp had been restarted, omg windows managed to get through the “let me decided what to install” and decided for me! once again same issues, so tried backing the comp to an earlier date, but then windows could not start on my computer so ended up having to restore it all to default settings…

sadly i know that means windows will once again want to install the very same updates that have been giving me problems…

i dont even want to install ANY updates now, as i happen to prefer my computer in working condition and im afraid to let microsoft screw me up again! [PT: January 2013]

Hi, in common with some posters, I had varying results with the 12 to 14 MS Patches installed last night, from the Patch Tuesday set (8th JAN 2013). I found that my new WIN7 home-build (64-bit Ultimate edition) went just fine, but my older Vista 64-bit Ultimate had 6 out of the 12 (all security updates to the VISTA OS system libraries itself) failed in the second update phase during the restart. The update system detected an update failure (as seen by the single line DOS like output from an internal “sfc” type of utility over a back screen, checking the 887 system DLL etc) then went to the splash-screen, with an undo/repair/rollback type of message. It seems that the OFFICE and .NET patches all went in OK, but NOT the OS Security ones. If anyone is interested in the KB details, I can provide that tomorrow. I have NOT had this happen on the VISTA box before, after 3 years use. ARD. [PT: January 2013]

I just got the 12-14 updates and it went smooth…so far that I can tell, it’s only been a couple of hours. One thing I have noticed is that I’ve got a red x on the wireless icon. I’ve got wifi and what I use for wifi all seems to connect ok I’m just stuck with the red x.

Dell Inspiron 15R running Win 7 – 64bit [PT: January 2013]

The Windows update was terrible, my computer froze on update 11 of 12 and crashed my computer. Thank God I was able to reboot. [PT: January 2013]

My computer tried to patch windows 8 and encountered some problem and it crashed my computer. After that, it failed to reboot. Its stuck on Loading Operating system… Further checking revealed my Hard drive died. I don’t know if windows patch had anything to do with it or not. My computer was working fine before tues. jan 8 2013. patch.
I am posting to see if anyone else has had a similar problem. [PT: January 2013]

Out of 6 servers in my office and 10 workstations.. only ONE machine didn’t have a problem with this patch.. usually I get to sleep in on wed after the patch tues.. nope.. got a phone call nice and early, that the systems were unreachable through the network however locally everything ran fine. in the middle of putting out that fire.. hopefully i will be able to post the results [PT: January 2013]

Having trouble logging into SharePoint 2010 following these updates? See my post for a resolution. [PT: January 2013]

Very similar symptoms as described by (1095) Elis, but with Win 7 Enterprise.
BSOD at update 14, failed to reboot, my boot drive (SSD) was not even visible in BIOS !
Switched PC off, disconnected and reconnected the power and SATA cables to the SSD drive, and thankfully it booted up. During next shutdown it applied the rest of the updates and it seems to be working now ! Very strange! [PT: January 2013]

This update caused a huge issue with my computer. Its a 2 momth old comouter I use to surf the web only…my entire desktop wss wiped out. Im doing a system restore but im worried now. I dont know anything about comouters. I did the restore to Jan 7th…hope thats ok. [PT: January 2013]

I had to do a system restore as well. Acer desktop, Windows 7 Ultimate. Definitely a bad patch. [PT: January 2013]

Crashed my Asus k70ij and My Netbook HP
with a BSOD error, the debug file was full of hardware , I reinstalled all my drivers still crashing, so I went back to the restore points
.. been up for 30 minutes no crash (knock on wood) yet

I am x64 on the Asus and 32 bit on HP

After sys restore, I changed my settings and hid all the updates, I am only installing malicious software tool

If Microsoft paid me I would try to figure out which one of the updates crashed my system [PT: January 2013]

Crashed my laptop as well, the “Starting Windows” screen would come up and after 30 seconds to a minute I’d bluescreen. Re-downloaded and tried to install the updates again, same result. Thank God for System Restore. [PT: January 2013]

Windows Vista 32-bit, Toshiba Satellite L305-S5875. After update of 1/8/2012 the security setting were altered and I could no longer access user/myself/documents without turning off user access control in the so-called security center. Also, some .dll files I wanted to use in .net programming became unusable! sqlite3.dll and sscrun.dll both failed to load in the .net IDE, and regsvr32.exe reported a failure to register either — although I had used them with no problem on 1/7 in another project. While dll hell is aptly named, I don’t expect updates to break very well-established modules. If I can get this fixed then MS updates are history as far as I am concerned. I won’t tolerate breaking the OS in the name of corporate diddling — I can look after my own security, thanks very much. [PT: January 2013]

Tuesday evening when the upgrades kicked off across our corporate infrastructure, a higher than expected percentage of the upgrades left computers stuck and unable to roll back. Later on Wednesday, our Helpdesk recommended not to upgrade due to several hanging issues. [PT: January 2013]

Applied these updates last night and several of our client servers are indeed hanging after the restart. Will have to do a restore if this continues. [PT: January 2013]

I installed the updates early this morning and now my pc will not connect to the internet, it says it is connected but the error icon is showing in the bottom right corner..

I have done a system reinstall and this has not corrected the problem.. Can anyone help in what direction I should go in.. [PT: January 2013]

Rang Microsoft on this issue, I installed these updates last night and I have not been able to boot, even to safemode this entire day. Of course MS tell me that it is my computer drivers at fault, not their perfect windows update, and yet I bet that all of you dont all have the same drivers as me! The ONLY common thread here is the updates and MS should sort themselves out! [PT: January 2013]

installed the updates on my win 7 machine today, browser is lagging like hell, i’m on cable BB, average 60mbps dl speed. I have run all my adware detection software and scanned and am clear of malware. This page took n eternity to load. Anyone else sufferring program lag, the update has even disabled some ok/cancel functions on Poserpro 2012….. [PT: January 2013]

After doing the update my windows mail with my comcast.net address will not authorize so I cannot send or receive email on this (my main) mailbox. How can i remove the recent updates.
Thanks [PT: January 2013]

Just before downloading/installing 12 updates 01-08-2013 to Win7HomePremium 64 bit, VIPRE/Emsisoft/Kaspersky/Malwarebytes/Comodo said no viruses; from time of reboot to finish updating to this evening, shutdown went from 5secs to 5mins; all myriad BIOS/driver/software/hardware issues extensively examined and OK; turned out one or more updates had switched reg entry “ClearPagefileAtShutdown” value from “0″ to “1″; reset to “0″/rebooted three times, key always back to “1″; deleted whole key/rebooted, STILL came back and with value “1″! Fixed by setting that key value again to “0″, then creating duplicate of same with value “0″ as a new key in different reg Memory Management division/rebooting. Of course, all 12 updates were first deleted by me; that pagefile key issue survived update deletions suggests to me update(s) somehow encoded key as undeleteable, ala say Nero or some virus. Only other thing I’ve noticed is that mere client icon for cloud link to HP printer diagnostics became broken; someone might have thought they ran into “Sality” if they didn’t know problem started with updates! [PT: January 2013]

After the Jan 9 & 10 Windows updates, I have been having internet connection problems. All computers with the updates are affected. Windows 7 and Windows7 professional both 32 and 64 bit. Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox all engines having the same problem. After restoring them to just prior to updates, they all work fine. Which update is the culprit? [PT: January 2013]

SONY VAIO, Windows 7 Home Premium, MSOffice 2007. After Jan 9-10 updates, Explorer will not preview MSWord or MSExcel files. All MSWord files open with Microsoft Open XML Converter instead of MSWord. When I tell it to open DOCX files with MSWord, all file icons switch from MSWord Icon to generic text file icon. [PT: January 2013]

I have had my toshiba laptop just crash and the blue screen appear twice. I am not completely computer illiterate but it took me a few days to realise it was the update that was the issue. As soon I I restore I am good. I am taking off automatic downloads from now on but how do I know which ones to do in the future? [PT: January 2013]

After this update all browsers went crazy – Win 7 x64 ulti. IE, FF, Chrome, Opera. Restoring didn’t made much good. Downloading any file (exe, msi, msu) can’t be done – it shows message like “(filename) was reported as unsafe”- and I can’t run it. Same thing on every other browser. Most of Adobe Flash can’t be viewed properly. Most of images on web are damaged. Many pages shown like on a phone’s screen (looks like user-agent pretending to be mobile browser). [PT: January 2013]

I tracked it down to XML Core Services update …. Basically it’s hosing XML files, some of which run on boot although I my system I didn’t get the boot loop problem for a couple of days but it hosed my TV Tuner and Program Guide (XML based) and then the data in My Movies (Again XML based) … Repaired both and worked good for less than a day and got stuck in a boot loop

When I went to check what updates had been installed a couple of days before as soon as I was the XML Core was updated it struck that all my problems were happening with XML stuff …. Uninstalled the update, hid it and I’m not going to worry about it since all it’s marked critical it’s only a risk in Internet Exploder and I use Firefox

Frankly I doubt hackers using that exploit could do as much damage as Microsoft did with this poorly written and tested update … I can say for sure no hacker of Trojan has done this much damage to any of my systems in the last 15 years ,,,,

Cripes I’ll take my chances with the Hackers and just not use Internet Explorer which is crap as far as I’m concerned anyway. [PT: January 2013]

Stephanie asked:

I am taking off automatic downloads from now on but how do I know which ones to do in the future?

Well it’s been awhile but this isn’t the 1st time MS has screwed the pooch on one of their critical updates but in the past (and for the near future) what I did is leave automatic updates and/or downloads off and when I see an update, especially one this this many at once raising the odds of one being bad, is wait a couple of days and do a Google search checking out forums like these to see if there is a prevalent problem … Like the past couple of days, lot’s of people having problems and possibly more as it took a couple of dyas for it to become any annoyance to a major boot problem ….

I’ll let some other Poor Saps be Microsoft’s unpaid Beta Update Testers …. [PT: January 2013]

Windows 7

When working on my computer, Windows decided to do an update just as my battery power failed. The computer crashed. Upon restarting my laptop, the screen just goes to the Window icon flashing in the centre of the screen and does not progress.

I have managed to reboot the computer with a limp fix that involves what looks to be a false restore to a previous backup. I really dont know what I am doing but this has not fixed the problem.
thanks in advance! [PT: January 2013]

I don’t know if it definitely was this update that destroyed my computer, but it was working fine before I installed this update and then just started freezing and crashing constantly the next day. I had to run startup repair and do a system restore to get it back working. [PT: January 2013]

Doing an update at a time, I got my issues narrowed down to the net frameworks updates. I had net framework 4.0 before all this started. I have found that this series of updates were on “patch Tuesday” and have caused many issues. One of these updates dated 1/8/2013, not only didn’t install, it wiped net framework 4 off of my system. The latest version I now have is 3.5.

So of course, any updates to net framework 4 is going to fail as it is no longer there, but Windows doesn’t know it’s gone and keeps trying to update it. It is not listed in “programs and features” so I can’t uninstall it. But any attempt to install it manually fails with no error code, just says “failed”. And it then “rolls back” the installation.

These are the three updates that keep trying to install and failing.

KB2736422
KB2742599
KB2756921

I have tried the various “clean up tools” and MS “fixes”. [PT: January 2013]

I have my Windows Update set at ‘ notify’. No way do I want M$ to take over my puter without my knowing. Still, I almost always apply the patches as soon as I know about them. I just want to know what the heck is going on first. [PT: January 2013]

Windows Server 2003, plain vanilla Intel Beige Box, been running smoothly for years. Froze on boot at “Preparing Network Connections…” screen.

2nd boot: Froze after being up about 20 minutes; found out when the DNS server stopped working.

3rd boot; set it for dskchk on reboot.

4th boot: ran nearly 20 hours, froze.

5th boot into safe mode: removed KB2742604, reboot, will let you know how it goes. [PT: January 2013]

Major problems (BSOD & repeat crash) with the 14 inportant January 2013 Microsoft updates on a laptop vista & windows7 PC. I thought my graphics card had gone to start with! managed with difficulty to do a safe start & system restore to before updates which fixed everything. have now turned updates OFF. It really is unbelievable that they don’t fully test the updates! [PT: January 2013]

Running Win XP SP3 with all current updates, and no malware. After installing the monthly Jan 8 updates, I can no longer log into either the computer normally or safe mode. Am somewhat dead in the water. It appears there are many other users experiencing the same problem. Is there a solution or workaround to this problem? [PT: January 2013]

Well, reinstalling the sqlite ado package made SQLite available for programming again after the update knocked it out for me. However, certain default folders in the windows-created user directory remain locked, even when I log on using the system administrator account.

(See HowToGeek for info on how to log on as admin if your regular account permissions become fouled up.)

However, since I nearly always save to my own file structure and ignore the idiotic Windows default folders I only lost one. Still, once again MS has increased my workload.

I notice that Microsloppy released another update today (1/12/2013), presumably trying to undo the damage the update of 1/8/2013 caused. [PT: January 2013]

I just updated mine a few hours ago and it screwed up my computer pretty bad! So much so that it had to crash my computer in the middle of me working on something important, after I rebooted my machine Windows doesn’t work anymore, I tried restoring it, memory diagnostics and all but nothing worked. The only solution was to re-install Windows 7! This happened to me 5 times for the past several months! I will never turn on Windows Update ever again… [PT: January 2013]

I installed all the security updates last night.

This morning the computer (HP Pavilion a6530f PC – Vista) would not boot up… stuck on the setup screen, nothing happening. Had to do a hard crash and then run system diagnostics. All checked out fine.. Did a restart. System (again) would not boot up. Only option left was a system restore.

This is FAR from the first time that Windows Updates have caused system problems on this machine. No More Windows Updates for me either….totally had it with that. Appears Microsoft has some compatibility issues with Hewlett Packard Pavilions. [PT: January 2013]

In Addition: After doing a search for HP in this thread….seems quite a few people with Hewlet Packard machines are having some serious issues with Windows Updates. I’ve had other HP systems before this one. Same problems. There you have it. [PT: January 2013]

The updates if Jan 8-11 have completel Ruined and made unusable both my mother’s and my boyfriends PCs. WELL DONE MICROSOFT!!!! [PT: January 2013]

My Acer laptop installed the updates, and has had a split personality ever since. Sometimes it works fine, others it is crazy slow. When I tried to do a system restore, I found I had no restore points. Well then. I have set it to not automatically install updates, and I found the everything installed except the Office update, which I hope will now stop trying to install. Any way I can find my lost restore points? [PT: January 2013]

@LindaN: There’s no “finding” lost restore points. If there are none listed, then none were created and there’s nothing to restore to. [PT: January 2013]

The latest updates for windows 7 have caused my Asus K53S to become very slow and, at some times, freeze. Restoring to before the update fixes the problem. Not updating it until the Feb. updates. [PT: January 2013]

My computer is installing a windows update (automatically started when I went to reboot) It has been at it now for 3 hours, in which time it has moved from Update 1 to 2 (out of 5). Is it normal for it to take such a long time? How long should I leave it? [PT: January 2013]

@Cathy Warwick: That’s too long. See How To Recover From a Frozen Windows Update Installation for help. [PT: January 2013]

After updating last night (1/14) automatically, basically my whole system is screwed up. Start screen is glitched permanently, with the tiles showing the wrong image, the charm bar doesn’t even show any icons, and the volume bar has completely disappeared. I’ve restarted multiple times, no dice. Seriously considering switching to Ubuntu because of Windows. Very disappointed. [PT: January 2013]

After the Jan update I can’t find my cookies anymore. Even the files in
‘shell:cache\content.ie5′ & ‘shell:cache\low\content.ie5′ have
disappeared. Has MS hidden them somewhere else? [PT: January 2013]

@Bob: They should be here: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies, replacing USERNAME with your username. [PT: January 2013]

Hi, info for my 1092 post: the patches I installed manually and individually were: KB2763674, and KB2742601. All the others went in OK after that, no issues. This issue was ONLY on the Vista Ultimate 64-bit PC. [PT: January 2013]

Have 30 laptops for training. January updates installed last night and *10* of the 30 computers are now dead in the water and will have to be re-imaged. (Yes, I’ve tried all the usual fixes.) Thanks Microsoft! [PT: January 2013]

Installed January updates on XP SP3 and immediately noticed that boot time had drastically increased from 1 minute to over 5 minutes. Was able to trace it to the .NET framework 2.0 security update (KB2742596) which for some reason is causing a major delay in booting (installed each update one by one and rebooted to find the culprit). Looked in Event log and don’t see anything obvious, even uninstalling this update directly through Add/Remove did not restore boot time back to normal.

Restored from a full backup and installed all of the January non .NET security updates and machine boots normally.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? [PT: January 2013]

@Bob: In the hand full of times one of my, or my client’s, computers have have post-Patch-Tuesday problems, they have always (well, sans 1) been related to .NET security updates. I don’t know why, but they seem to often be the culprit. You might try reinstalling .NET v2. [PT: January 2013]

After the late Dec. early Jan update time from click to print output is 4 times as long as before.
It can now take 45 seconds to a minute after clicking print for the page to output. We have noticed this on several of the computers in our building. [PT: January 2013]

last thing i did tuesday was load the updates. now computer crashes when I try to open web browser [PT: January 2013]

@Tim Fisher: Thanks for the reply. I actually spent alot of time trying to get this to work by completely uninstalling all versions of .NET Framework manually (I have all version 1.1 to 4.0) first uninstalling each the security updates individually (rebooting when required) and then the main .NET version. I followed this up by using the Microsoft .NET uninstaller tool to clean the system and then re-installed .NET Framework 3.5 (which installs 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5). I then ran Windows Update and when KB2742596 was installed, bam the slow boot returned.

What I noticed in Event Viewer is that my services (Service Control Manager entries) were always delayed in running about 3-4 minutes after the boot. When I uninstalled my firewall (Online Armor) I found that I could boot to the desktop in under a minute, but if I tried to open Control Panel or any programs there was a major delay in opening those programs that corresponded to when the services started (3-4 minutes later).

I spend hours working on this and came to the conclusion that there is something in KB2742596 that is conflicting on my system. I was hoping I would find some posting with someone having the same problem, but maybe it’s just my specific setup. In the meantime I’m going to avoid these .NET security updates until I see an update from Microsoft or I have a spare day or two to try this all over again! [PT: January 2013]

@Bob: “Luckily” there seem to be .NET updates each and every month so maybe the next set will correct the issue you’re seeing. We’ll see. [PT: January 2013]

Did anyone find a solution to the IE slowness issue which occured after the January Windows Update? Or, must we wait for Microsoft to provide another update? I have been using other browers as much as possible in the meantime, although some applications I use are tied to IE which is frustrating. [PT: January 2013]

is there any known fix for this mess? win7 64bit Toshiba p500- 12D dual core 4 gig memory..my registry is fubarred services do not work, service tools missing, cannot install/uninstall programs takes 45 mins to load up …used to take 0-3 seconds , hangs for nearly an hour after login, untill desktop appears cpu runs at 0-5% mem used to run at about 950mb fully loaded now is 1.5gig before opening any apps , any apps take at least 20mins-2.5 hours to actually start, everything freezes at a few second intervals, i see MS are admitting nothing, all im being offered are fix its, 1 did “fix” the registry for those 14 updates, however this is not helping with everything else it has screwed up, all the system info seems to be repopulating each and every time i start up, i did leave the system on for 2 full days with just the resource monitor open to see what was going on and let it do what it had to do, but am getting nowhere. btw took an hour to type/post this [PT: January 2013]

My word 2007 is not opening after windows updates on 14 Jan 2013. [PT: January 2013]

(114) Tracy says:
Did anyone find a solution to the IE slowness issue which occured after the January Windows Update? Or, must we wait for Microsoft to provide another update? I have been using other browers as much as possible in the meantime, although some applications I use are tied to IE which is frustrating.

Tracy, Microsoft up to it’s old tricks slipping updates through confirmed by numerous others online. I understand mine is OFF and I have IE symptoms you described also. [PT: January 2013]

I have XP SP3 with all the latest updates BUT KB2742596 won’t properly install. It says it has installed okay then soon afterwards up pops the yellow shield saying it’s got to be applied again. I ran the Windows Update Fix utility a few times and each time it says it found a problem and fixed it, but it *doesn’t* fix it. Don’t know how to get out of this endless loop. Any ideas? [PT: January 2013]

@Gamjy: You could try uninstalling, and then reinstalling, .NET 2.0. Also, did you see this?: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-windows_update/install-of-kb2742596-completes-but-is-not/b5a576cd-967e-4cbb-81ff-dd8e367489b9 [PT: January 2013]

The 13th of 16 updates: Windows 8 64-bit Malicious Software Removal Tool. Malicious indeed! Windows Update hung for over an hour on this one. Not a peep out of mrt.exe and related processes all the while. Had to power down the machine manually to get it to stop doing nothing.

On reboot, the preceding updates finished installing, updates 14-16 downloaded and installed successfully, but the ghost, 13 is nowhere to be found on the list, whether succeeded or failed.

Yet another hour of my life lost to Microsoft. Thanks Microsoft! [PT: February 2013]

I was playing a game last night feb 12. At the settings I had my game ran at 48-60 frames min max. Turned computer off (installed updates), morning turned on pc (finishes bios update) watch some shows, turn my game on, some strange reason I am getting 21-25 frames. I look and look what the issue is and the only thing I can think of different was the update last night. So now what? 1600$ laptop plays as good as a netbook now and I have to figure out what to do about it and figure out how, because as it is, my computer is a brick to me now. Thank you windows. What if I cant or don’t want to spend the entire day troubleshooting how to fix them bricking my hardware? I should not have to deal with this !@#$.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name LAIN
System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard
System Model HP ENVY 15 Notebook PC
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 2201 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard F.0B, 10/31/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 7.95 GB
Available Physical Memory 5.15 GB
Total Virtual Memory 15.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 12.4 GB
Page File Space 7.95 GB [PT: February 2013]

Yes same here.
I ‘look after’ a friends computer HP Pavillion , have had endless problems with it and Windows 8, updates, programs not compatible, Norton 360 problems, goes on and on.
Today’s Malicious update No 13 seems to have hung.
Will power down like you did and see what happens. [PT: February 2013]

February 2013 update killed my browsers. Still have internet connection and can access steam and even game online, but none of my browsers will connect online (sea monkey -firefox derivitive & IE, left on system) nor can windows update or my internet security – kaspersky. Am running a asus N 71 laptop. Note I never activated the office trial and use open office instead, so I did NOT download the office updates, but I still have the trial installed (which ment I got the option of downloading office updates but I de-selected them. [PT: February 2013]

Our PC has been updating for over 12 hours is this a normal thing to happen? It says it has 9 updates to do but seems to have stopped at 5, it hasnt frozen as the little blue circle is still going round but just concerned about the length of time its taking. [PT: February 2013]

Correction regarding my problem [two comments above, internet access killed]. What actually happened is the update stuffed my router, I can get my pc to work fine if I just plug straight into my modem. No more Lan parties till I fix this.
info: router is asus RT-N 15. [PT: February 2013]

Windows update stuck on 6 of 9.
Followed your instructions on how to recover from a frozen windows update installation, but not sure that the updates actually took place after safe mode. How would I know that?
Laptop seems to be working though. is there a somewhere on the computer that tells me what update I have?
thanks, Tim, you are the best.
Nano [PT: February 2013]

@nano: Yep, head to Windows Update in Control Panel and click the “View update history” link on the left. [PT: February 2013]

Both my laptop and desktop stopped functioning after this update. After a lot of trouble I was able to restore both.
Right after startup, when you normally get the login screen, the screen stays black, and on my PC (where the login is skipped) a mouse cursor was visible, and my 2nd monitor also functioned normally. Though the 1st monitor stayed black, (not off, but just displaying only gray/black)
I could not do much, none of windows programs would run, 3rd party software did run as normal, only not visible if on 1st monitor.

I think you made a major error in this update, and it has upset me quite a lot.

Both systems are 64bit win8pro. NOT pre-installed but upgraded from win7. [PT: February 2013]

Last night I went to shut down my computer for updates and when I got on it again this afternoon it was in sleep mode. Upon waking it up I see that the screen is flashing back and forth between “Preparing to configure Windows…” and “Installing Update 1 of 9…” [PT: February 2013]

Same here like Nycrea . Just a black screen on both monitors and keyboard num lock blinking every second or so. Mouse seems to appear from time to time. Any ideas? [PT: February 2013]

@sadyque & @Nycrea: See the “How To Recover From a Frozen Windows Update Installation” link in my post above. [PT: February 2013]

It may be bad timing but since the 2/13/13 update our mouse has been acting up. We have to click it several times to perform normal functions. We can’t click and drag or copy and paste. Did the updates in any way affect mouse performance? BTW – we have rebooted several times, tired the mouse on another computer and it worked fine and we even tried a different USB port on the computer that is giving us fits and we had the same problem. My conclusion is it is not the mouse or the USB ports. Thanks for any help. [PT: February 2013]

@Kyle: I’m not aware of this happening to anyone else or any updates pertaining to the mouse. However, in general with these types of issues, you might try “reinstalling” the mouse driver, which you can do from that option when right-clicking on the mouse hardware item in Device Manager. [PT: February 2013]

After reading through the list, I feel like the lukiest person around. I have two Desktops, one running Vista Home Premium 64bit the other is Win 7 64bit. I have never had a problem with MS updates on either machine, they take the updates just like Timex. Now AMD, that is another story. It seems like they come and go with small errors about every third update. Only thing I found was to keep the last good CCC so I can retreat.

Again Tim, great site.
Thank you. [PT: February 2013]

I am having issues similar to what others have described above. I have run the updates at least 3 times & restarted after the updates as instructed. Each time, my screen stays black and I can only see the cursor. The only way I can get it back is to remove the battery & start over again. It cannot,seem to repair itself either. I am not a technical person by any means, so I am really stumped. Now it’s telling me, again, to make these updates but I am afraid to try, again! [PT: February 2013]

Hiya just updated all the new updates now I can’t connect to the Internet any ideas? [PT: February 2013]

@Avermim21: You might try disabling and then re-enabling the Windows Firewall. If that doesn’t work, reboot in Safe Mode with Networking and see if it works there. If so, you might want to go back to normal mode and run sfc /scannow. [PT: February 2013]

Well add me to the list, update earlier this week wrecked my HP. Woke up during the night after it had tried to update and noticed a blinking cursor on a black screen, now I can’t even run a system restore.

Such is life with Windows. You broke something good. [PT: February 2013]

Did anybody else have an issue where all of your desktop icons disappeared after the update? I found out how to turn them back on and I am glad I didn’t have the issues listed here. I’m just curious if anyone else had the issue with their icons disappearing off of their desktop. [PT: February 2013]

Lots of fun with this last update, firefox crashes, windows crashes, thunderbird crashes. I have not been able to nail down what is causing this. I have updated and run my anti-virus with no problems detected so decided to check my drives, ran chkdsk /f on c: during startup. Now have had the following happen.
All services were turned off and disabled, had to manually go set each one.
System restore monitoring turned off on all drives.
Video driver now not recognized , had to reinstall it.
Could not connect to network and browsers do not work.

I am glad I do a full backup everyday because I used it to restore today.

I do not think I will reinstall this update for a few days. [PT: February 2013]

In response to casbott Feb 14th message

Kaspersky released a bad update a couple of weeks ago:

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/02/05/kaspersky-antivirus-update-cripples-internet-for-thousands-of-windows-xp-machines/

We had the same problems, all network traffic worked but we had big issues with web traffic via TCP port 80. The Web Anti-virus component is the problem, worst, the kaspersky updates are obtained via that same port so it can never fix itself. To resolve, turn off your web antivirus, reboot, manually do an update of kaspersky, turn on your web anti-virus and try again. [PT: February 2013]

@Joey: Thanks for that, appreciate it. [PT: February 2013]

I just let Windows Update reboot my windows 8 64bit tablet to install its so-called critical update. That was a mistake. Now my Wifi is totally crippled “with no networks found” and reinstalling the wifi drivers did not fix it, nor did the list of 20 other workarounds I have accumulated to try and get windows 8 wifi working. I just did a system restore and got my wifi back. Think I will disable windows updates for 6 months until MS get their act together. [PT: February 2013]

I have a HP with Windows 8 I got it for Christmas in Dec it was working great!! Then in Feb I kept getting the blue screen and it says to go online an look up SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION then my computer restarts when I try to go online or do anything a few seconds later my computer goes blue screen and restarts! How do I fix this? Should I just wait to turn on my computer til there’s a update from Windows?

(Sent from my IPAD because I can’t use my computer) [PT: February 2013]

@Lupe: See see the How To Fix Problems Caused by Windows Updates link in the Patch Tuesday Problems section of my blog post above. [PT: February 2013]

I’m in the same boat. tried updating my desktop computer, now it wont start. my windows home server restartd, now it wont start. the battery in my laptop died and shut down, upon restarting it went through updates and now it wont start.

microsoft really knows how to screw things up. [PT: February 2013]

I have had several updates sitting in the queue, but was reluctant to install after the update in December caused me to pay $150 in recovery fees. Of course, the system was running so poorly, I finally gave in and attempted install of a few at a time last night at 8pm. I have experienced no less than 10 blue screen events since. I have started in safe mode and attempted several restores. Just now – 12 hours later, I may have it running. We will see how long it lasts. There are still 16 “critical” updates uninstalled at this point and I am not willing to try them again. MAC here I come, as soon as I can make it happen. [PT: February 2013]

After February 27, 2013 Windows 7 64bit automatic update, certain software displays elements blue instead of intended red color. I will now go back to turning off Automatic Updates like I used to.
“Critical Security Updates” are never so – compared to the OS configuration damages. [PT: February 2013]

update removed higher screen resolution, and cant reconize my screen

years of experience and 8 windows editions, still they fail. [PT: February 2013]

The Auto Update last night causes Internet Explorer to be unstable. Every Time I startup IE, I get errors immediately! This problem goes away immediately after Uninstall of the last update. This is a brand new computer that cost ~ $1500 to have built by AVA (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit). Is anyone else experiencing problems with IE after this latest Windows Update? [PT: February 2013]

Feb 27th update causes Firefox and IE to fail. Uninstalling fixed the problem. [PT: February 2013]

Yesterdays update caused Firefox and IE to fail. Firefox can be started in “safe” mode. Had to uninstall the update to get them to work. [PT: February 2013]

I look after a number of friends PCs and just in the last week Windows Updates seem to have trashed THREE of them! Two Dell laptops and a HP Desktop.

The common factors appear to be that they all (were) running Vista SP2 32-bit and all have a “recovery” partition on the disk.

With each, the ususal “Install Updates and Shutdown” option was selected (why no option to shutdown without installing updates? I’ve always found this very frustrating!). Updates seem to be applied OK and machine shutdown. None of them would boot afterwards, either hanging or just offering the “Startup Repair” option – which didn’t fix the problem!

Managed to get the Dells running using System Restore, but I think nothing is going to save the HP.

This is really BAD. MS really need to test their updates more thoroughly. The “lay” PC user must end up very frustrated and despondent after such an experience. [PT: February 2013]

Hello, yesterday night when i shut down my computer it began running windows update, only 1 update. today when i log in on my computer: windows messenger won’t start, firefox won’t start either and my taskbar has changed colour to grey..?

can you help fix this?

regards,
Kristoffer [PT: February 2013]

@Kristoffer: I’d do a System Restore at this point. Then be sure you read everything in the Patch Tuesday Problems section of my blog post above. [PT: February 2013]

Thursday, 28 February 2013

Still having major problems with latest windows 7 update.

After installation, all I get is a blank black screen with a movable cursor!

This has been happening all month! [PT: February 2013]

Having as nightmare of a day-
I am getting progressive reports from my users (I am the IT admin for a medium sized international company) across the world of BSOD’s after Windows updates. operating systems vary…..One user i managed to restore is now having problems when using IE9- he has a weird black line on the right hand side of the and when he starts using a mouse to scroll using the scroll bar it BSOD’s … i have no idea how bad it is going to get but i’m already up to 10 laptops down!! [PT: February 2013]

Windows updates have caused my laptop, using windows 7 home, to crash on restart, going into launching system restore, which is then failing to cure the proble. What the hell is going on with Microsoft? Has no one bothered to test these updates before releasing them onto its users. I have now had to restore my system to original factory settings twice, i cannot keep doing this. Luckily i backed up everything beforehand. How long is this crap going to continue? Microsoft are on course to lose a lot of faithful users the way they are going. Sooo pissed right now…. [PT: February 2013]

I have an XP machine that worked perfectly fien until the Feb 26 update. Now whenever it tries to boot it loops in a reboot cycle. Cannot enter safe mode or last known good configurations either as they exhibit the same boot loop behaviour. Thanks Microsoft [PT: February 2013]

I too have had problems since the update installed this morning. If I open IE9 (I’m on Win 7 on an HP laptop) and try to scroll down a page (holding the scroll bar and dragging) I blue screen with a 0×000000050 Stop error. Also, website buttons are not working like they should — for example, one site (my homepage) had me logged out when it came up (and shouldn’t have been) and when I hovered over the “sign in” link I never got the “hand” so I could click to sign in. Other buttons did the same thing. I tried the troubleshooting several times but finally just uninstalled the update. I know it’s a recommended update but until they fix this issue, I won’t re-install. I’m sure there’s other issues but that’s the only ones I’ve come across. [PT: February 2013]

Yes this update wasted so much of my time trying to figure out why both my Firefox and IE9 would not start.

- Initially thought it was a virus and ran all my Anti-virus, Spyware and Maleware and did not detect a thing.
- Thought it was the plug-ins, disabled, but same results.

For those who do not wish to uninstall the Microsoft patch and have Firefox, there is a work around. Go to Options > General (tab) > Uncheck the ‘Use hardware acceleration when available’

Cheers [PT: February 2013]

Hi. I’m running XP S3 and after this last update, my beautiful system won’t hibernate if Chrome is running. I’ve been looking for a fix and this thread is the most currently close to my problem. Any suggestions? Thanks. [PT: February 2013]

@Ginger Mayerson: Have you tried reinstalling Chrome? [PT: February 2013]

Our laptop recently had the windows update the other day (2/27) and now we cannot get our Wifi to work. It keeps saying connected but then keeps switching back to limited connectivity. Nothing we have done seems to work, and we were having no problems with the laptop 24 hours ago prior to the start of this update. Anyone having this problem and have any suggestions? [PT: February 2013]

@Peter: Try disabling and then re-enabling the Windows Firewall. [PT: February 2013]

To those of you who are having a problem with HP laptops especially the HP compaq presario f700 because of the sound card STOP RIGHT NOW. You will not be able to fix this problem if you have tried everything and it says no sound card installed even after going through all the safe mode steps. Let me tell you how you can fix this nasty little problem that was made on purpose by HP manufacturer in order to make more money through tech support selling warranties ok? Go to amazon and buy a virtual 5.1 channel USB sound card for under $5 right now. Get it in 3-5 days and plug it in and it will work to get you sound. You wont have a speaker but you can use a $1 pair of headphones or buy a $5 speaker at Walmart. You can fix this. Dont grow any more gray hairs over this dumb problem. God knows I have. My ethernet plug in port went out, my sound card port went out and one other thing too. These are suppose to happen because of the way HP made the laptops though!! They did this on purpose. All you need is the USB sound card. Just type in the search on amazon — 3d sound card usb — . God bless you all and have fun. [PT: February 2013]

6-Mar-2012 Update kills my network connection randomly within 24hr periods requiring a hard reboot of the machine. Network card is a Marvell Yukon 88E8040 Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller. [PT: February 2013]

March 12, 2013 Post-Update Reboot Stalls Out (Win XP): I’ve restarted the machine at least 5 times since the most recent set of updates and half of the time the cursor (mind you, not the pointer) has been frozen and I couldn’t even enter my password.

A couple of more restarts later and the logon is possible again but the machine never loads up the desktop…I’m stuck looking at the background of the desktop without taskbars or any desktop icons…with little to no hard drive activity. I also can’t simply CTL-ALT-DEL out of it and have to reset the system with the power-off button.

No clue what is happening with MS Update but this is the most ridiculous it’s ever been… [PT: March 2013]

Everything was working fine last night, then I saw this morning that it had run a background update. Logged into GW2, and couldn’t believe the horrific lag. Started browsing and was noting similar lag and hiccups. Went to Speedtest and ran a test, kept telling me my Ping was 9ms, but would freak out when attempting to test download speeds – would start then nose dive, then shoot back up, and then never end, just slowly decay. Similar results on my wife’s machine, except hers was the upload speed. Tried a couple of my small Unbuntu boxes and they were fine.

I’m getting tired of feeling dread whenever I see my desktops restart from a Windows update. [PT: March 2013]

The last update at the end of Feb 2013 caused nothing but problems. My profile ended up corrupted beyond repair and I spent 3+ hours w tech support. He created a new one but lost all my pws and work bookmarks and just about everything else. Now get blue screened at least 2x a day, run slow and look…another update. Like I really want to even consider installing any more updates? Get it fixed. This is why people switch to Macs. [PT: March 2013]

pictures are not loading after Microsoft updates march 12, 2013 [PT: March 2013]

I have a laptop with Windows XP SP3 while my friend has a desktop with Windows XP SP3. We both basically have the same softwares and devices in our systems.

I never have any problems with MS Updates, however, my friend’s desktop had crashed twice. The first time was last December, after the overnight update. His desktop would not boot, cannot restore to previous configurations or boot in safemode. I have to reinstall XP and put it in a new folder in order to keep all the files and folders in tact. The second time is this week (March 13). After the update during the day, my friend rebooted the system and it did not proceed further beyond the progress bar. The desktop stuck on a black screen with white progress bar all across the bottom of the screen. Again, I have to reinstall XP, like in December.

It’s a pain to fix these problems as I have to spend a full day to reinstall everything.

Does anyone has any idea what will cause such problems? As I mentioned above, I never did experience such problems in my Windows XP laptop.

Thank you for any suggestions/comments. [PT: March 2013]

@Steven: You might consider running a RAM test on your friend’s machine, as well as a hard drive test. The hardware could be failing. Also, is there any chance your friend rarely resets his/her computer? [PT: March 2013]

After this update I have a problem with word 2007. I click a word file and the program opens but not the file. How can I fix this or report the problem? System restore fixed the issue, but it comes back whenever it updates. [PT: March 2013]

@kg4392: You might want to check the file type associates in Control Panel. Something may have goofed there. [PT: March 2013]

I just tried installing the updates on Win 7 sp1 (64-bit) on my hp laptop. After restart, I got the BSOD. System restore took me back to prior to update. So far, so good after restore. But WTF with the update??? This is my first major bust using Windows Update, but now I’m really reluctant to proceed with this one or future ones. Anybody else seeing this problem with updates for this week? I haven’t tried each update individually to see what might be the problem one(s). [PT: March 2013]

It seems that not all is well with IE 10 push. I have Windows Update set to download but let me chose when to install. Yet after these updates downloaded…something crays happen I went to power off like I nornally do and Windows Update stated telling me that updates were being applied not to power off my system.

When the update finished the system powered off. When I powered on and booted up I noticed the my IE 32bit was gone and the IE 64bit tries to open then crashes. It tried to do a restore back before the updates, but the restore failed. Tried going back another restore point and it too failed.

Rebooted into Safe Mode…tried the restores again they failed. Tried going back another Restore Point and it too failed. Think maybe Microsoft has a major problem that needs addressing…quick…today not tomorrow…NOW! [PT: March 2013]

Microsoft updates March 13, 2013 Windows 7 Pro

It seems that not all is well with the IE 10 push. I have Windows Update set to download but let me chose when to install. Yet after these

updates downloaded…something crazr happens I went to power off like I nornally do and Windows Update stated telling me that updates were being

applied not to power off my system.

When the update finished the system powered off. When I powered on and booted up I noticed that my IE 32bit was gone and the IE 64bit tries to

open, then crashes. I tried to do a restore back before the updates, but the restore failed. Tried going back another restore point and it too

failed.

Rebooted into Safe Mode…tried the restores again they failed. Tried going back another Restore Point and it too failed.

Think maybe Microsoft has a major problem that needs addressing…quick…today not tomorrow…NOW! [PT: March 2013]

I uninstalled most of the files that came form the patch update and it has fixed my problem – I wish I had the time to know exactly which one(s) caused the problem but I did not have the time to go thru each uninstall and test them.

The ones I have installed with no issues now include:
All start with KB:
2729449
2604121
2572078
2518870
2468871
2487367
2416472

I’ll be waiting a few weeks before I try to update again and hope it is fixed… [PT: March 2013]

I am now getting the blue screen of death [bsod] since the updated installed. Any thoughts? [PT: March 2013]

@Neal: See this, but you may need to troubleshoot to the specific BSOD if none of those ideas work. [PT: March 2013]

These March updates completely changed the look of my screen. Everything on my desktop is gone! When I try to open excel and word files I get a message saying ” Microsoft XX 2010 cannot be opened. Try again or repair the product in the control panel” How do I get my stuff back? [PT: March 2013]

@Laura: If you haven’t already, just try restarting your computer. This might be “user profile corruption” which I’ve seen happen a few times. If that doesn’t work, try a System Restore. [PT: March 2013]

Major crash following automatic windows update 14 March. Windows 7 would not open at all this morning 15th. Tried restore to previous good start up points but would not work. I am having to do a full win 7 non destructive reinstall. This is terrible and making me reluctant to download any updates. Don’t they test these things fully before release?

Always had windows. Anyone know if the same kind of issues occur with Apple? Wondering whether to change next time I change computer? [PT: March 2013]

@mlesley: Very rarely do things like this happen with Apple computers. Reason: Apple controls the hardware and software. Apple doesn’t have to worry about a poorly designed driver from a hardware company interfering with a security update. The trade off is that Apple computers are seldom upgradable and aren’t as versatile (traditionally, anyway) as Windows PCs are. A Mac is a good idea if you have the budget and little use for a computer beyond the Internet and what the Mac does out-of-the-box. Microsoft is trying out this approach with the Surface computers that they’re creating. I’d bet a lot of money that they end up suffering far less issues because Microsoft controls all aspects of the devices, just like Apple does. [PT: March 2013]

I have also been encountering some BSOD (3 in the last 2 days in fact) after the updates…

I don’t know the code, it was only 0s…
like:
0000000000000000000
0000000000000000000
0000000000000000000
0000000000000000000 [PT: March 2013]

This update is pure crap. Finally recovered from it yesterday only to find it did it again last night. Back to good again and will hinder auto-updates. When will we know it’s safe again? [PT: March 2013]

3/16/13 – This is the second Windows update in about three weeks that I had to back out. The first one caused a blue screen whenenver Internet Explorer was started. This one caused Internet Explorer to lose access to the Internet – it apparently broke Norton Internet Security.

How do you inform Microsoft that their updates are causing problems? [PT: March 2013]

Got a “standard” Microsoft update pushed down on March 15 post my installation of of current Norton Internet Security a day or 2 previously. Post Microsoft update I suddenly could not connect to the internet. I identified that IE 10 was installed so I uninstalled it and still could not connect so I did a rollback to prior the mass Microsoft update and was able to connect to the internet. Has anybody identified what piece of crap Microsoft is pushing down that screws up the internet connection? [PT: March 2013]

march 2013 windows update won’t allow me to access the internet. I did a restore.. everything is fine, then it auto updated again, lost net again (google and msn). any suggestions? [PT: March 2013]

@Rick: Try disabling and then re-enabling the Windows Firewall. If that doesn’t work, there may have been a preexisting issue with your network card drivers so I’d recommend updating them prior to applying the update. [PT: March 2013]

I myself am having loss of internet issues after the recent update. Only Chrome has loss internet connectivity however. IE10 and latest Firefox work just fine. No BSOD or anything else is wrong, just Chrome not being able to go online. What the hell is Microsoft doing, do they even test these things before release? [PT: March 2013]

My computer crashed several times after windows updates recently. I was thinking it was HP computer’s issue. It is not. It is the overnight microsoft update issue. As of now, I could not recover my screens. I do not know what to do. Could you please help how I can bring back Windows 7 display my menus and icons. I appreciate your help. thanks. [PT: March 2013]

The update completely destroyed my internet speed and online gaming expirience. I used to get great fps, now it’s choppy and laggy, even Teamspeack is lagging and that doesnt require much badwith. Websites in chrome load so slow that I can read a book while waiting for images to load.
Oh and my laptop crashed for the first time ever.It’s pretty new,Intel core i7, 8gb ram.ill hinder windows updates from now on until it is fixed. [PT: March 2013]

no longer can access Comcast email after updates today Thank you very much I am running explorer [PT: March 2013]

What the hell is MS playing at with this latest update????????? I have a micro Sony lap top with a small screen and what was in one line previously @menu Bar and Command Bar’ are in now displaying in 2 lines, and the Win Ex 7 header looks like something any kindergarten age child could do better. Get a grip MS you use to make life better not worse!!!!!!!!! [PT: March 2013]

I updated the laptop yesterday and the updates went fine, re-booted, wen’t through the normal 3 step configuration during shutdown and boot. And I re-booted it about 3 or 4 times since then. Only on the last boot I got that message…
I’m a bit worried about a virus.
Is this normal? The update line “installing XX (a number) of 104 files” appeared during the starting windows screen (the black screen with the windows animation). It was really fast. [PT: March 2013]

@Leo: Chances are that Windows 7 SP1 started installing. Restart your computer if you need to but otherwise just give it time. [PT: March 2013]

Boy am i glad i looked before i updated again. MS crashed my PC bad in Dec. 2012 and had to reimage. I took all updates up to 11-2012. and have just been rebuilding since. Heck, i figured MS would get things fixed in two months. I’ll just keep Auto update turned off for now. Linux in looking better all the time. [PT: March 2013]

So serious someone could steal your information….
SERIOUSLY we are using scare tactics to get people to take Updates

The only thing this update has done for me and 3 others that I personally know is lead to MAJOR problems that where not there before
PC randomly freezing up for 10-35 secs.
Video messing up.
PC running very slow

I actually had to re-install windows and all was fine but I then forgot to turn off auto update and a few days later it updated reset and i’m back to where I was before the re-install

If MS is going to push out updates maybe they should get the bugs out of them first [PT: March 2013]

HP Pavilion dv6. After the recent windows update this march 20,2013, it’s stuck on the windows logo. I tried the last good known configuration and repair my computer but then it showed blue screen. When the laptop tried repairing the disk error, when it was applying update operations it said failed C000043 applying operation “Random number.” Anyway to fix it? I just hope before updates are given to the users, be sure it’s free from problems -_- [PT: March 2013]

My computer also crashed after the last updates. Running XP. Like satgod, I got my computer started once and then Windows Update downloaded again and I had to start all over from stratch.
Tried restoring again to a previous but finally gave up. Now I’m installing everything new from scratch.

I’m not happy. [PT: March 2013]

Auto update happened yesterday on this PC – disaster, can’t get to any of our regular internet sites, including email, banking, anti virus updates even on-line crosswords!

wtf are they up to? This is absolutely crazy. [PT: March 2013]

Latest updates caused IE 9 and 10 to crash on many websites or not open at all. Quick fix was to revert back to IE 8 because none of the fixes Microsoft is offering are working. [PT: March 2013]

For those who experienced issues pertaining to the following:

Windows Explorer becoming slow or unresponsive which is often accompanied by frequent black screens only displaying a mouse cursor.

12/12/12 update tips that might help. I’m a systems admin and our company was crippled by the 12/12/12 update and we suffered through its side effects for months. We finally are back to normal.

Our problem was tied into a combination of things. The 12/12/12 Windows Update (mainly the Windows Defender update), source code repository software, and corporate anti-virus (Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business) crippled many of our employees’ computers. Our symptoms included Windows Explorer becoming unresponsive which often led to frequent black screens only displaying a mouse cursor which was only then resolved by a hard reboot. Our anti-virus turned out to be the main culprit. I disabled Windows Defender completely and patched Kaspersky with the latest updates (patches pf11 and pf18) and no more problems. Here are some tips that might help:

1) If you are running a separate anti-virus program on your machine disable Windows Defender. Multiple AV products conflict with each other.

2) Patch you AV with the latest updates. If you still have problems uninstall your anti-virus and then restart your machine. Before reinstalling your AV product, see if that speeds things up. If it does you may need to notify you AV provider of the problem, or just get a new AV product.

3) If you use some sort of source code repository software make sure that you anti-virus application start-up and application monitor (if it has it) are shut off. This slows your computer down to a crawl.

Hope this is helpful. These are just tips that worked for us. Good luck! [PT: March 2013]

since update lots of left click operations on websites are non operational, so no internet then thanks Microsoft……………………………… [PT: March 2013]

I have a 6 year old Vaio with windows vista. I began to get windows updates two days ago in total over 60 now I have an icon saying I have more updates. When I checked it seems there are 22!!
It looks as though it is changing Vista into windows 7. Should I allow any further updates? [PT: March 2013]

@sandra: Don’t worry, there’s no way “it is changing Vista into windows 7″ – there are just a lot of updates to apply. [PT: March 2013]

After MS’ December update, my laptop wouldn’t update anything. (Tried “everything,” including the “Fix-it,” pkg, no go.)
Went online & saw (many) others were experiencing the same — mostly WinDef-related (so)…. As I’d “disabled” WinDef, I enabled it (delayed start) & the prob was fixed. (Or so I thought.)
Am now (March 25th) having problems, again — ‘cept this time, Windows Update says the update (to WinDef) failed, but WinDef itself says it *has* the latest update & was installed last night! (Aargh!)
Aw, C’MON, Microsoft! Is not like you’re the “only fish in the ocean.” (Are you *consciously* creating corporate suicide???) [PT: March 2013]

After installing the Microsoft software updates for Windows 7 Home Premium, I am experiencing a similar problem to @mb40 (entry # 27 above). I tried to open facebook and the entire computer froze. The mouse pointer would still move, but I couldn’t select/click/close anything, and even trying to open the task manager didn’t work. After doing a hard shut down, I restarted and then did a test to see if it was, in fact, just facebook that was freezing. All the other websites I tried loaded, but facebook froze it again, so after doing another hard shutdown/restart, I did a system restore and was able to get facebook to work again.
However, my computer decided that it really needed these updates and re-installed them overnight while I was asleep. So now I’ve got the same problem again. I’ve tried to open facebook on both internet browsers that I have (IE and Chrome), and it freezes the computer on both of them. I am willing to do a system restore, but it takes a lot of time, and I would prefer not to have to do it every time my computer decides that it needs these updates.
Also, this is the first time that my computer has re-installed updates that I took off with system restore. I’ve only had to do a restore a couple times in the past, but it’s never tried to give me the same updates after I’ve taken them off.
So the final question, I suppose, would be either how do I get facebook to work with the new updates, or how can I prevent these new updates from re-installing after I’ve done a system restore?
Thanks for any help. [PT: March 2013]

@jshelt: I’ve never heard of an update causing a problem with a specific website like that. I’d suggest making sure your antivirus program is updated (in case it’s blocking something), that both browser’s security settings are defaulted, that cache is cleared in both browsers, and that all Facebook related cookies are removed. [PT: March 2013]

Latest updates patch tues apr 13 seem to of deployed ok. I do wish they did not exist though as patch tuesday always sends me into a cold sweat. I have read so many horror stories attributing to the updates. Trouble is you feel compelled to install them! [PT: April 2013]

Last nites updates are causing my server 2003R2 to blue screen in normal startup. Will attempt to do a system restore to the day before. [PT: April 2013]

After updates my Notebook with Windows 7 Professional 32Bits in loop and not start….and command for repair(sfc; chkdsk) is not working… Help! Some suggestion? [PT: April 2013]

Gotta love patch tuesday

We found a problem on our Windows 7 systems where the kaspersky anti-virus gets disabled. It either complains about the license or that the databases are corrupted. Forcing an update on the Antivirus makes it work again until the system is reboot.

Upon reboots, check disk runs … everytime.

After investigating, we’ve narrowed it down to patch KB2823324 which is an update to ntfs.sys driver. Removing the file and rebooting fixes the antivirus (but check disk still run), rebooting again, the computers are fine.

We’ve confirmed this problem and work around on a number of computers.

For those using wsus, make sure to test that patch thoroughly before approving it for you client systems. In any case, wsus removal works fine

-Joey [PT: April 2013]

Solution:
http://tech-memos.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/windows-7-nao-inicializa-apos.html [PT: April 2013]

This latest update has just crsshed my laptop, I have nothing now but a blank screen. Any suggestions apart from buying an Apple?? l was running Windows 7 Ultimate. [PT: April 2013]

@MartinMcCabe: Does it not power on at all or does the initial boot seem normal and then once Windows starts to loads it freezes? [PT: April 2013]

The latest Win7 update seems to have wiped my girlfriends computer. All her NON-MICROSOFT/factory programs are gone. Firefox, games, open office, etc., etc. Completely uninstalled. All but one document is gone. All pictures and videos are gone. Somehow all the music files are still there though….. IE, which we had deleted off the computer, is back.
It could have been a virus I suppose but she does have antivirus software (AVG).

After system restore they were all back. [PT: April 2013]

@Tim: Sounds like it was a user profile corruption issue. My guess is that those files were all still there, as well as the programs, but the shortcuts to them were missing because she was using a new profile after the corruption event. I’ve seen this happen a few times before. My advice: follow my prevention suggestions in the link in the blog post and give it another shot. [PT: April 2013]

- lenovo T510
- Nvidia NVS 3100M
- Windows 7 64bit
- hd is bitlocked

This update and IE10 cause a problem.

When booting the laptop, windows informs that HD is corrupted. I ran the checkdsk but it can not find anythink to fix.

This happens every boot.

I uninstalled the updates and IE10 and not I dot not have any problem. [PT: April 2013]

@Nik: To be safe, I’d check my hard drive with a better tool, just in case. Try this program (it’s free). [PT: April 2013]

The April Patch Tuesday was a disaster for my Win 7 x64 system. The computer was working normally until I tried to boot it this morning. Last night, I did the Windows Update about an hour before shutting the computer down for the night. Update kept prompting me to restart, but I put that off until I was done for the night. Then I clicked shutdown, and Update did some work before the computer powered down by itself. This morning, it will boot OK to a normal looking screen, but then the screen gets display glitches, and neither the mouse nor the keyboard will work after that. The screen glitches appear at seemingly random times from seconds to minutes after a normal looking screen from a seemingly normal boot, but it also happens immediately after I click Start, so I cannot try to repeat the update process in hopes that it just may have not finished properly. I tried multiple reboots and different system restore points, but none of them will fix the problem. Fortunately, safe mode seems to work with no problems. I just ran sfc /scannow in safe mode, but it found no problems. My plan from here is to disable all the start up items (because the system works OK in safe mode) in hopes that one of them may be causing or contributing to this problem. Once I can get the system to run OK for a short time, I will run Windows Update again and see if the problems correct themselves. Pray for me. [PT: April 2013]

After installing the patches from April 2013 and on the restart I’m seeing CHKDSK being run. It’s happened on two computer so far (Acer, HP).

Every reboot now it wants to run chkdsk. Chkdsk runs without errors.
I’ll be deploying the patches on other systems. If I continue to see it I’ll repost. with details. [PT: April 2013]

@John M: Thanks, appreciate it. [PT: April 2013]

Since win 8 so far is a flop, Microsoft maybe is doing what they can to make older OS malfunction after updates. Another maybe more accurate explanation is that Microsoft do not know what they are doing. But this make me even more reluctant to buy a new OS from them. [PT: April 2013]

My Windows Explorer is all messed up now. Amongst other things I can’t delete anything without the system freezing. Hopefully there will be a correction to this and other problems in the next few days. [PT: April 2013]

Here is a quick update. Since Everything seemed to work OK in Safe Mode, but my system froze with massive color glitches (in very low resolution) in normal mode, I took a wild guess that the problem could be my display driver. In safe mode, I disabled the driver for NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT. So far, so good! The system is working well in normal mode and I am running Windows Update now. If all continues to work well, I will search for an updated display driver later. If there are more problems, I will update again, but until then, no news is good news! Thanks for all the prayers! [PT: April 2013]

My laptop does not start after April 9 2013 update. I have a restore point, but Windows does not start So, to my7 conputer Guru! %$¨#!@% [PT: April 2013]

GOOD BYE MICROSOFT
PART 1

Imagine you were driving down the road and…

your car says: I have an update from Microsoft Sync would you like to install it?
you reply: What are you fixing?
your car says: There is a potential problem with the Voice Recognition.

you say: Sure go ahead, it sounds important.

your car says: Please pull over while I install the update.

installing update …….
rebooting voice recognition …..

—————————————————-
——————– SYNC ———————-
—— POWERED BY MICROSOFT ——

0xc000000e
info: “boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible”

While the scenario is fictitious, at least with respect to SYNC, it was very real for my desktop the morning of 4/10/2013. I think the “Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (KB2817183)” may be the one responsible but I cannot be sure yet. The error in the story above is exactly the error I get and the machine is not bootable after this update. Of course when I saw this I feared the worst, HARD DRIVE FAILURE! but running chkdsk from the Sys Recovery CD assured me there was nothing wrong. I tried the Auto Setup Repair multiple times but nothing seemed to work except restore to a point prior to the update. I tried everything:
sfc /scannow
Bootrec /RebuildBcd
BOOTREC /FIXMBR
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
Drive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60

However nothing was able to make the machine boot. Finally after the restore the boot sequence asks to run chkdsk but no errors are found. One thing I noticed was that the system recovery thinks the OS is mounted on the E: drive but my OS drive is mounted on C:.

CONTINUED IN PART 2 [PT: April 2013]

GOOD BYE MICROSOFT
PART 2

Personally I have suffered at the hands of the ill-conceived Microsoft Software Empire for too many years. At first it was kind of fun to figure out why the stupid software was making the system crash, but now it’s just plain annoying. Don’t get me wrong Software development in general is flawed because it is not practiced rigorously so Microsoft is not alone in their damage; however, as Don Henley would say, I make my living of the Microsoft Platform, so it makes the suffering all the more . Were it not for the fact that Microsoft is indirectly my loving provider I would have divorced them on the count of mental abuse a long time ago. Let me tell you there are a lot of cool things about Microsoft but having developed Software on the Microsoft platform for over fifteen years I can honestly tell you that I have spent at least 1/4 to 1/3 of that time fixing problems caused by software released by Microsoft.

Since divorcing Microsoft is not a possibility, at least for the foreseeable future, maybe I can send a message. This month I am buying a new car for my son. We were considering a Ford Fiesta. It has nice features and it seems like a good choice to get him through college and his first years in the working world. However Ford has SYNC – POWERED BY MICROSOFT so a Ford is entirely and without doubt never to enter consideration.

My message to my dear and loving partner: “Microsoft honey, I am leaving you, maybe not today, but I am leaving you”, as Chryssie Hynde from the Pretenders would say, it’s a thin line between love and hate. [PT: April 2013]

with this week update my computer didn`t start. it was need to recover to a point prior the update. the automatic repair didn`t work so I need to use the F8 key to choose the repair option. didn`t start on secure mode either. Anyone facing same problem? I`m guessing that there is some conflict with AVG [PT: April 2013]

I thought it would be helpful to translate link below as it helped several people:
http://tech-memos.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/windows-7-nao-inicializa-apos.html

WINDOWS 7 NOT INITIALIZING AFTER UPDATE INSTALLATION KB2823324 – 09th April 2013

To resolve partially the issue, after entering into command prompt in windows recovery mode, try the following:

- When restarting, press F8
- Choose the option “Repair your computer”
- Select the keyboard layout and press Next
- Input administrator´s password

Type the following command:

dism.exe /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions

Remember the letter “C” could be another depending where your Windows is installed, such C:\, D:\, E:\ …, for this access your unit and confirm if your Windows is in the partition.

After completing the command above, restart your computer.

Then, proceed again with Windows update however disable and hide this update: KB2823324 (that´s the one that is causing all these problems). Update description: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2823324

2nd Option:

1 – Boot the computer with the Windows installation media;
2 – Enter into recovery mode;
3 – Open notepad;
4 – Navigate to folder %windir%\system32\drivers and verify if the file version ntfs.sys that is installed is the same of KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2823324;
5 – If that is the case, rename the file ntfs.sys to ntfs.sys_old;
6 – Navigate to folder %windir%\winsxs and find the file Ntfs.sys in an older version. In my case it was: 6.1.7601.17945;
7 – Copy this older file to folder %windir%\system32\drivers.
8 – Reboot the system. [PT: April 2013]

This latest upgrade is horrendous. It brought my Dell XPS to a crawl. Rebooted several times and even had to conduct a hard reboot. Have removed the Windows patches. [PT: April 2013]

Good Day,
I did security updates for Windows on my computer science park of the Priorities Review.
And the machines that did have problems and restarted the OS Windows 7 Professional 64 and 32 Bits.
Everything is happening this week 09/04/2013 to 11/04/2013.
Already have disabled the Windows Update of machines and servers.
Anyone know of something?
My park has 500 machines.
The solution was to format until the moment the machines. The restoration does not work.
att,
Breno Prates [PT: April 2013]

I woke up to a blinking cursor this morning so I popped in the Windows disc and did a system restore, but since I have Windows set to auto update, it immediately started updating itself. Again, after the reboot, I got a blinking cursor so I did bootrec /fixmbr in the recovery command prompt. I rebooted the machine and it did successfully a few times but was once again met with the blinking cursor. When I get home from work, I’ll probably do a system restore. [PT: April 2013]

Hi Tim, I don’t know if you know but here in Brazil we are facing a huge issues after do this update in Windows 7 32 and 64 bits, the machine don’t restart, to solve it we need to use the Installation CD and return one access point, the problem is really big, see the news in my blog [PT: April 2013]

[ADMIN EDIT]: English Translated Version of Jose’s Blog Post

@Jose Mascari Neto: No, I’m not in Brazil, but I did notice the pattern just on the posts here. I also read your blog post and looked at some other reports. Yes, it seems that the ntfs.sys update (MS13-036 KB2823324) has caused serious issues with the Brazilian version of Windows 7. I’ll keep an eye on it and post if I see anything official come out, especially concerning a reissue of the patch. I’d appreciate anyone else doing the same as well. [PT: April 2013]

I’m actually in the US and am having this issue oddly enough. I’m not getting a chkdsk prompt or any indication of a dead HD, just a blinking cursor (as I described a few posts above) which seems to be related to the MBR. [PT: April 2013]

My wife’s Windows 7 computer seemed to revert to its initial state after installing the 4/9/2013 windows updates.. The outlook icon was gone. The IE favorites were gone also. Those are the primary apps that my wife uses. I was able to use a restore point to back out the updates and that seemed to correct the problem. But now I don’t know what to do with the updates. [PT: April 2013]

I actually contacted Microsoft Support about this and they said that there are known issues and that correcting patches should be issued next Tuesday. Of course, I’m not exactly sure which “known issues” he was talking about. The support agent also said that he, too, experienced issues similar to the ones I described. [PT: April 2013]

@Rob: Thanks for the comment. I’ll keep an eye out for an official announcement. [PT: April 2013]

April update ruined my pc, now it won’t boot correctly, won’t restore from ANY restore points made weekly. I have wasted 2 days on this and I am thoroughly pissed. Posted from my iPod: nothing else works on any of my windows pc’s! [PT: April 2013]

I am having serious stability issues with my IE since the latest “updates.” It seems to need to restart itself every few minutes. This is highly inconvenient since I am in an online grad school and am finishing important assignments, as well as finals being next week. (I also just lost an important email related to IE’s incessant need to restart itself.) I guess I’ll just have to restore back to before Tuesday and wait to see if next week’s updates solve the stability problems. [PT: April 2013]

April update has been an absolute flop. Came into the room to find my PC shutting down (at this point I was like GREAT, another update, better boot up to previous state). Chkdsk ran on startup which I cancelled. Got to the login prompt. Logged in and upon load, nothing but application errors. Everything effectively on startup died. Double clicked Outlook and was prompted with a Windows Installer prompt. None of my office suite loads! This is an absolute joke. Never again will I install an update. [PT: April 2013]

IE is having major issues after April 2013 patches. Verizon community pages pop up a warning that they no longer support IE 6 and I need to update, but I’m running IE 10. Angie’s list log-on pages fail without error messages. Email links to the Angie’s list review site won’t let me past the first page. All of the sites having issues work fine with Chrome, and they all worked fine before the patch cycle this month. [PT: April 2013]

After reading all the problems thank the heavens my system still works.

What I’m really annoyed with is now my taskbar is white ? not the normal color i have selected in preferences.

Searched the net but nothing since its related to this new patch.

ARG!!! microsoft !!!! [PT: April 2013]

Att: Bill Gates
Further comments to my above comments (as it was typed via my cell)

* Application errors on startup. Failing to load services (Installer service etc), yet these services are actually running. Numerous errors in my Event Logs.
* None of my previous applications loaded (Yes, I presume I have lost all my work from the previous state).
* User account – I cannot create a new user account in the control panel. Clicking the ‘Create new account’ link does absolutely nothing!
* Google Chrome – The program loads however I actually cannot visit Google’s homepage. It presents a certificate not valid (YES, for their own webpage). I can however get to bing.com.
* Google Chrome – Tried to download a random file from a site that was accessible, download starts, completes then the file is not accessible whatsoever.
* Tried recovering to a previous recovery state – A few days prior to the updates, still doesn’t change anything. Damage has been done to this.
* Tried using the ‘Repair Your Computer’ feature on bootup, I cannot log into my administrator account. The password does not work yet the password works when you actually boot into the operating system using the same username….
* sfc /scannow, chkdsk etc = did nothing

I suspect the Registry has been hit with stake to the heart.

I will be contacting customer support to make sure they are aware that their update has caused this, getting them to correct my problem by any means possible and notifying them that Microsoft’s W7 testing team needs to be overhauled, that this type of behaviour deters current customers, that it deters potential future customers consider purchasing a Microsoft product and will also throw in them that for their complete incompetency in releasing an update, I will NEVER install an update from them again (pending I remain on a Windows O/S).

I have been burnt in the past and I will not be burnt again.

Thank you and good night. [PT: April 2013]

Last time this happenened it was two years ago!
Lost all use of computer with these updates, mail, AV automatically locked off and disengaged, PC running at tenth normal speed, no access to software and files, updates seriously flawed – I have had to run recovery disks with restore function to obtain re-use as O/S was pre installed on my PC. [PT: April 2013]

I have an XP SP3 machine and have ran updates on it without issue for years… Until this April’s updates…

After doing the update and rebooting. Several Aps would not run without errors and sometimes even cause Blue Screens.

I tried to reverse the updates using system restore, but it would come back saying it ‘cannot restore because the system had not been changed’ which I knew not to be true.

To get around that I ended up running System Restore in ‘Safe Mode’ with success and luckily backed everything out. [PT: April 2013]

Infopath crash after Secutity Updates.

Unistall KB2760406 KB2687422 and it won’t crash anymore.

Works on W7/32/64 IE9/10 Office 2007/20019 environment [PT: April 2013]

after all the issues I have had since updating, I am pretty sure my next laptop/desktop will be an apple! could not even try to use restore, as it had just been all wiped by me mins before the update. restore had used up 24 gbs of memory when i deleted it, was going to create new restore point, but then comp insisted i update first (refused to create new restore, saying an error occurred each time. i am guessing because update was using up so much of the processes at the time grrrr) is there an easy way to manually remove these updates? [PT: April 2013]

“(210) jshelt says:
After installing the Microsoft software updates for Windows 7 Home Premium, I am experiencing a similar problem to @mb40 (entry # 27 above). I tried to open facebook and the entire computer froze. The mouse pointer would still move, but I couldn’t select/click/close anything, and even trying to open the task manager didn’t work. After doing a hard shut down, I restarted and then did a test to see if it was, in fact, just facebook that was freezing.”
this is 1 of the 2 main issues i am having, it is not only fb for me though, it does the same on 1 or 2 of my gaming sites as well. the second main issue i am having is any site i use right click features on, like save picture or save picture as, causes the button/bar with the words save picture etc to get stuck on my display. it hovers over games like bejeweled, browsers like chrome or firefox, hell it even stays when i shut all down but my desktop background! after using save, only way to make it go away is to log out/switch user grrr [PT: April 2013]

I am not going to install April updates. I have windows 7 installed on my laptop and tried two times to install updates but my laptop got almost crashed following the updates. they caused to run chkdisk everytime I rebooted the windows and some other problems…
luckily, I have managed to recover by hitting F8 during start up and running the repair computer option. this way, I was able to run system restore to restore my laptop to one of the previous restore points before April updates.
now everything seems fine… [PT: April 2013]

I just updated the post above with an official response from Microsoft regarding issues in April 2013′s Patch Tuesday:

“April’s MS13-036 update (Described in KB2823324 as an update to the ntfs.sys file) is causing widespread problems for some people, possibly primarily those with Brazilian localized versions of Windows 7. See Microsoft’s You receive an Event ID 55 or a 0xc000021a Stop error in Windows 7 after you install security update 2823324 support article for help if you need it.” [PT: April 2013]

My computer just did a windows update. Now everything is shrunken.
I can get website pages readable, by holding the Ctrl & scrolling at the same time. (I’ve got this page zoomed in to 150%).
I’m using Google Chrome, & Windows XP.
The things that are shrunken & won’t get fixed by using “Ctrl & Scrolling” are my Windows task bar & Start-Up Menu. When clicking on Documents or Pictures- the box that pops up is tiny (I can stretch out the box to fit my monitor size, but the folders/pix stay tiny, & are about 9 thumbnails across, while it’s normally about 4), Chrome “Bookmarks Bar” (I could normally get about 15 Favorites up there, now I could fit around 25. The “Other Bookmarks” menu, & the Tabs are really small too, along with any font on all of those I just mentioned. I’m going to need bifocals to read anything.
Oh, & I’ve only got about 13 desktop short-cuts, that normally took up two lines to display. Now they’re so tiny they all fit in one line, straight down, & you have to get really close to the monitor to even read them.
The text size is set to “Normal”, & Screen Resolution says: 1440×900 (not sure if that’s what it was before). It’s at the farthest point “More”, if you move it anywhere closer to “Less” it gets all distorted.
This tiny display & fonts look is really driving me crazy. Am I the only one having this problem? [PT: April 2013]

One answer to all your problems : Linux

If you dont want to lose that windows feel, most if not all Linux Distros have that windows look & feel.

For linux noobs, I recommend Ubuntu : http://www.ubuntu.com/ [PT: April 2013]

April 9, 2013 WIn 7 Update REMOVED my ability to backup to external hard drive.
There ought to be a LAW ! [PT: April 2013]

HI,
I keep receiving windo-vista-ultimate updates for past ‘patches’, i.e. I am getting previously installed updates. Of course, my PC refuses to install those ‘garbages’ and I have been looking for a few days for ways of getting rid of those downloads without success. Is the same problem happening to someone else? If, yes and your were able to discard those things can you give me a glue on how you did it?
Thanks and have a nice day…..

JPM [PT: April 2013]

Win Vista ( US English version ) on an older Dell desktop also failed to boot following the successful installation of the April Windows Updates. On boot, it displayed the error screen with the option to “Let Windows Fix the problem” That ran and failed. It then gave the option to Restore. It restored using the restore point that was created by the update before the updates were installed. It then booted and ran normally. [PT: April 2013]

This most recent patch did mess up my computer and required me to do a System Restore. I wish Microsoft would get their act together and be more careful with the patches. [PT: April 2013]

The latest update KB2823324 besides corrupting my Kaspersky database and license also caused the dirty disk bit to be permanently set. Chkdsk does not reset it even though no issues are found. [PT: April 2013]

in addition to my last comment: due to the fact that the dirty bit is set i can not do a system restore. [PT: April 2013]

Win XP Pro
windows update keeps offerring “same” uodates over and over again. Even though I have sucessfuly installed them at least 20+ times. The pc seems to be working fine other than that Really annoying update problem. Any help would b appreciated. [PT: April 2013]

Updates are
Kb2789643
Kb2742596
Kb2756918
Kb2729450
Kb2604092
Kb2656352
Kb976569
Kb982168
Pkease Help!!! [PT: April 2013]

The latest win update rendered my HP laptop completely useless. I allowed the update to download new video drivers for my ATI video and it has been downhill since. I’m on my 6th hour trying to revert back to a per-update state. Should have kept my backup image updated. Ms sucks!!! If anybody has any suggestions I’m totally open. I have an old HP laptop- DV6-3120us with ATI radeon 4xxx integrated graphics. I downloaded a new version of catalyst from the AMD website and it made it worse. It would be nice to bill MS for all my wasted time fixing my system [PT: April 2013]

RE- [UPDATE 249]

To help people with similiar problems this is what I did:-
Ran machine in “safe mode” then as I had a “REimage Icon” on desktop I accessed and ran REimage software with licence at cost ! All worked exceptionally well after an hour of operation to repair damaged files etc.
Then I obtained a new “free” antivrius and ran that, then upgraded at cost to full version – all now O.K. and machine running excellently.
Next [with somei intrepidation I obtained updates to install [183MB !] and then the brave bit installed them all in one go !
Updates failed !
Results are as follows:-
KB2823324
KB2817183
KB2813345
KB2820917
KB2808735
KB915597
KB968930

Yes , that is right 7 failures. On completion I noticed in my system tray latest update for KB9688930 (Power shell 2.0 WinRM 2.0 for Vista) installed [failure] then “Retry” [failure]. This latter update single file is 32 MB size and I think has major proportions and is a real problem. Howver, my PC still working well despite “failures”. I do hope that this helps someone. By the way my O/S is Vista Home Edition that I have actually come to like now !!

Michael C. [PT: April 2013]

This article covers various options to resolve the April 9th windows update issues affecting Win7 and Win Servers:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2839011 [PT: April 2013]

I don’t know if it was related, but if not, the timing was extremely coincidental.

My computer is brand new – had only been put together about 2 weeks ago. Windows 7 home premium. After the most recent update it downloaded, it was acting strange, so I restarted it, and the cursor froze before windows started. I had to power it down using the power button, and now it won’t start up at all. It’s acting like it’s not plugged it, but it is getting power, and nothing is obstructed. [PT: April 2013]

Both Flash and my Emu 0204 audio interface are completely screwed up now due to this update. Did the update, and my computer immediately started freezing up upon reboot. Zero response from my keyboard & mouse. Screen is stuck. Tried to play an Amazon Prime video. Freeze. Rebooted. Tried turning on the Emu. Freeze. Had to reboot again. Holy crap. Worst update EVER. No joke. Never experienced this before. It has trashed my system. I even tried updating flash and all it did is make it work slightly in IE 64. IE 32 and Firefox are still fouled up and I still cannot connect my Emu to ANY USB on my desktop. Incredible. [PT: April 2013]

I visited this site because yet again- despite my foregivings learnt through bad experience, I attempted to install the latest ‘security updates’ on my Vista-(Explorer laptop and it did what it always does= crash my computer, obliging me to restart in safe mode and then to ‘system restore’
I have always found- for years back, that truing to install M’soft updates crashes my computers- through XP and then the accursed Millenium, now on Vista. So my advice is avoid the hassle and never install updates. [PT: April 2013]

My old Dell e1505 laptop with Vista Home 32bit and AVG, failed to boot after the April updates were installed. ( posted above ) The computer Restore ran and removed all the updates. That corrected the problem. I then reinstalled each update one at a time. The update that caused the same failure again was KB2808735. Removing that update again corrected the no boot – bad audio problem. For now KB2808735 is hidden so that it will not be installed in the future. Automatic update is not selected so that I can wait for update problems to be discovered before updates are installed. It seems that only a few Vista computers have been affected by the update. [PT: April 2013]

My computer (Win7 Ultimate, 64-bit) still works and still installs updates, but there are some definite issues. SP1 refuses to install, Core XML Services has been hosed for months (updates fail to install, Microsoft Games won’t launch, occasional spurious errors during file operations in Explorer where the action completes but you have to click “Try Again”), and it seems that Help & Support is not just inactive, it has been completely removed. From my point of view, there is still no Microsoft OS that comes close to competing with 32-bit XP, which will still probably be in common use 20 years from now. Get your copy now before the feds ruin the internet. [PT: April 2013]

I recently upgraded to Word 2013, but the selected font colors do not show up on my screen even though they do show up in my printouts. I am having trouble keeping track of where my selected text font colors are. Very troublesome. This never happen in my earlier Word versions. [PT: April 2013]

April 2013 update broke my Realtek Ethernet driver for Asus motherboard, depriving me of internet access. I had to repair the driver/reboot several times before rebooting stopped breaking the driver. not sure if this was a Windows Firewall issue or main network driver issue. Could have been a corrupted download from Microsoft’s update server, but well not amused. Fortunately I’ve a dual boot into XP so I could check my internet connection was ok. (Win 7 Ultimate x32 SP1 and all updates installed). Microsoft WAKE UP! [PT: April 2013]

P.s. Microsoft, do us all a big favour and stop deleting all but last one of System Restore points when updates are installed. They may be critical to you, but believe me when things go wrong we NEED previous Restore points! [PT: April 2013]

Looks like this update broke my Aero – again… :-/ [PT: April 2013]

The April 13th, 2013 Windows Update upgraded the video drivers for my nVidia GT 240 video card. I did not notice this immediately, because there were no error messages. I started searching for causes to my screen going black and losing the video signal for a few seconds. I also noticed sporadic images and icons missing from MSIE, Waterfox, Palemoon, Firefox and Opera. Only Google Chrome seems to work correctly. All background colors and some CSS menu colors are all white now. The only thing that seems to be affected other than the browsers is Office 2010. All of the icons in the ribbon bar are low resolution 16 color versions and loaded with the jaggies. I have done so many manual driver re-installs, it filled the HD space available for restore points prior to the 4/13 updates (before I located the cause). Now those color anomalies remain, regardless of the video driver version I install. The manual installs did fix the loss of signal issue. I am curious if anyone else has encountered any similar problems. Please leave a comment here. Especially if you found a solution. [PT: April 2013]

I haven’t spotted any issues as others before me mentioned, but I did have a strange case.
After an update on April 30th, I turned on my desktop today. It showed “Configuring Service Pack” and took at least 10 minutes to finish. Afterward, it would restart and go through the same process over and over again. After so many times, I had to start the desktop in safe mode which, instead of safe mode, brought me to the regular sign in screen. Besides reconfiguring my settings upon sign in, nothing seems to be broken… for now. [PT: April 2013]

My computer went through the update this morning and now I no longer have Internet Explorer. That is the first noticeable thing I noticed priro to leaving for work. I will troubleshoot when I return home. [PT: April 2013]

We just installed the recent April Windows updates and now my screen resolution is completely trashed. I have attempted to adjust the DPI and resolution to no avail. Software programs have enormous fonts and mixes with tiny font. I have a 21″ Samsung monitor, but I have no idea how to restore the fonts to be readable and correct. [PT: April 2013]

@Brodie: Sounds like Windows Update might have also installed a video driver update. I really hate it when it does that (I prefer to get them directly from the manufacturer and install them manually… it’s safer). So I’d look into that first. You can check to see if that happened by looking at the list of updates installed in the Windows Update applet in Control Panel. If that happened, you might be able to update the driver from the video card manufacturer, assuming a more recent one is available. That – or uninstall it and reinstall it (the driver). [PT: April 2013]

Since the problems with updates of Windows Vista, I have found that the best way to install all updates is to set Windows update to just alert you when new updates are available. When it tells you that updates are available, review the updates and select the ones that apply to you (be sure that you are only installing updates for Microsoft programs and device drivers that are on you computer as occasionally, Windows update mistakenly pulls updates that don’t apply to your system). Then install as many of those updates as it will allow you to install with Windows running. This will show you if there are any update patches that may be a problem. If critical security issues are present, those will not be installed while Windows is operating. It will ask you to restart you computer to complete the install. Restart the computer an if the updates take more then 30 minutes to install, try to get back to your login screan with the Ctrl, Alt, Delete keyboard shortcut. If that doesn’t work, then use your reset button or power button to shut down your computer. Be sure to wait 30 second before powering you computer back up to allow your hard drive to spin down. Then follow the the directions at the following website to repair the problem. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbysymptom/a/windows-update-frozen.htm [PT: May 2013]

Please DO NOT install Windows Updates of May. 14th, 2013!!! You’ll find out that you cannot access shortcuts and programs from Win 7 explorer shell AND it will prevent auto-start of: Emsisoft Online Armor Firewall, Avast 8.0.1889, and other programs too! The only program that will load will be MalwareBytes Pro latest version since this program hides itself from changes made, but ALL the other programs will be UNACCESSIBLE! So untill Microsoft corrects this issue i will NOT install their updates! Our small network is like this: First we install the Win 7 updates in our Netbook, Win 7 Starter, 32 bit, 1.66 Ghz, 1 Gb Ram (Although it’s Starter it has several TRUSTWORTHY 3rd party software to make it run Aero and Themes and some other Home Premium features, so the License is as original!!!) If there are ANY problems with this lower configuration and we won’t install the updates on other Desktop/Laptop devices so as to ensure that Microsoft isn’t doing the same crap all over… like the issues with previous update before this one! The only WAY to recover was to execute System Restore (Please ALWAYS ENABLE this and Volume Shadow Copy & other WIN 7 services so you can Recover from these severe ERRORS from Microsoft Execute a manual system restore EVERY DAY before you shutdown!) We run McAffe, Emsisoft and Kaspersky virus scanners once a month and Malwarebytes and Avast once a week scans to ensure that nothing is happening but with MBAM, Online Armor and Avast we think our systems are beeing protected! So blame Microsoft and DON’T install the latest updates! Have a nice free from crap day! [PT: May 2013]

I uninstall Microsoft office 2007 from my PC, trying to install it back it tells me that some files are missing and when i install that same Microsoft office 2007 on another PC it installed…pls what can i do….cos am planing to format my PC which i don’t want to do. [PT: May 2013]

@Augustine: Your question sounds better suited for my forum. Some quick advice, though: 1. Uninstall Office 2007 if it’s partially installed, 2. Reboot, 3. Run sfc /scannow (and reboot if it fixes anything), then 4. Try to install Office 2007 again. [PT: May 2013]

Windows 7 update KB2798162 (Update to improve messaging of dialog boxes when you run executable files in Windows) causes folder renaming (or attempts to assign a name other than “New Folder” during creation) to fail with the following error.

Item not Found
Could not find this item This is no longer located in ???

To restore folder naming/renaming, either rollback the update or use regedit to remove the following entries from the registry

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{15CA69B3-30EE-49C1-ACE1-6B5EC372AFB5}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{2112AB0A-C86A-4ffe-A368-0DE96E47012E}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{491E922F-5643-4af4-A7EB-4E7A138D8174}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{7b0db17d-9cd2-4a93-9733-46cc89022e7c}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{859EAD94-2E85-48AD-A71A-0969CB56A6CD}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{A302545D-DEFF-464b-ABE8-61C8648D939B}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{A990AE9F-A03B-4e80-94BC-9912D7504104}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{B250C668-F57D-4EE1-A63C-290EE7D1AA1F}]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{C4900540-2379-4C75-844B-64E6FAF8716B}]

[PT: May 2013]

I’m working with Symantec on a problem with their latest release of Endpoint Protection (it seems this update did something to the teefer2 driver) — this version has been causing a slowdown on my network. Per their instructions, I’ve disabled the firewall feature of their Network Threat Protection and things have run more smoothly.

Then, last night, updates from Microsoft were automatically installed and now the slowdown is back. I’ve already checked that the firewall policy is still disabled…. I’m about to dig in to all the updates and see which ones I may have to roll back. [PT: May 2013]

This update has really hosed a number of my outlook users. First it caused an issue with Exchange, then after addressing that, a number of clients still can’t connect to our Exchange server. [PT: May 2013]

Running XP. Security updates installed today. Rebooted. IE accesses internet. Firefox gives me message can’t find the server at en-us.start.mozilla.com., but yet Firefox interface tabs allow me to access internet anyway. Bookmarks seem to be working as well.

Clearly an MS security glitch. I haven’t tried to do anything with Windows Firewall, as yet. Seems that message is an error. [PT: May 2013]

The latest update ruined my Synaptics Touchpad! [PT: May 2013]

I’ve never had a problem with updates before, but this time it crashed my system & necessitated a system restore. Error logs show 8 updates failed to install. First error message:

Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x800f0816: Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1 on Windows 7 SP1 x86 (KB2804579).

*sigh* [PT: May 2013]

Windows update wipe out my desktop, the system restore won’t work.
i’m so sick of this bull [admin removed], as soon as i get the money im going Mac [PT: May 2013]

Last Months auto update hosed my creative live drive software and ruined the diagnostic software that came with the program originally. Also I have an issue with the audio icon on the lower task bar not coming on at boot, it can be turned on at the control panel but apply has no effect and the next boot it is off again. There was a certificate error that came up and I was pretty sure this recent security fix last month was the culprit. I took the time to reinstall the creative software after uninstalling it and the same problem again. I know this is caused by Microsoft and there will be no fix from creative since the card lost support due to age years ago. I guess they don’t care about other vendors programs and will hose anything to secure their own, ironically it was they that forced the other vendors to write this software like they wanted to begin with. The good news is the sound quality is still great and not effected only the diagnostics. [PT: May 2013]

This latest update has caused my machine to hang multiple times at start up, programs are often unresponsive 5-10 mins after I reach desktop. Time to restore. [PT: May 2013]

On logging off W7 Starter, the installation process stuck on 8 of 12. Did a Hard Boot, and was eventually able to boot into Windows. I then ran a manual update – which carried on with 9 of 12. The history showed that all 12 had been sucessfully installed – twice – i.e there were 24 entries. A restart was needed – and now everything is fine. Patience is a Virtue – leave at least half an hour if it appears stuck – and then watch the Disk Busy light for a futher ten minutes for any sign of activity. [PT: May 2013]

I have noticed that when I try to move folders using windows explorer, in Win7, an alert comes up saying that the folder I am moving no longer exists! I click the try again button, and then it works. This doesn’t happen on file and folder copy, just move.
It looks like there is some issue with explorer, judging from the comments above. Everything went smooth as silk except I notice this file moving glitch. It is just a minor annoyance, but if I move multiple folders at the same time, I have to click ‘try again’ for each one. Selecting ‘Do this for all conflicts of this type’ doesn’t stop this happening. [PT: May 2013]

I HAD my computer set to update automatically. After if finished installing the latest updates, I couldn’t get anything to work. Finally, after fighting with it for 4 hours, I reset it back to before the updates – and now everything is working. Fixing security issues by not letting the computer owner do anything online, doesn’t seem like the best kind of fix. Now no more auto updates. [PT: May 2013]

Best way to fix windows problems is to Get a Mac [PT: May 2013]

My Toshiba laptop had a windows update yesterday, and I’ve been having problems ever since. At first it would freeze within 5 minutes after startup. even in safe mode it would freeze within 15minutes and require a manual restart. I then did a system restore which seemed to help, but my computer continued to run slowly and eventually freeze still. so i cleared out some things from Msconfig and ran a few antivirus and cleaning software. antivirus said i was clean, and the cleaning software helped a bit, but my computer still is having trouble and occasionally freezing if i try to do anything too major, like play a game.

The computer updated automatically installing these patches after which it won’t start even after 5 attempts of automatic repair and a few normal restarts. It tells me that the PC cannot start because of a patch. Luckily I have installed Ubuntu in case Windows does not work as this issue happened before. I suggest that Windows updates/patches be tested more thoroughly as this is a very severe issue (not being able to start Windows after updating). Again, it’s not the first time this has happened. I don’t have a backup and I’d hate to have to reinstall every single program. I don’t know what I could do at this point. But if I do get it to work again, I will definitely TURN AUTOMATIC UPDATES OFF.

Installed windows critical updates two days ago. Computer crashed and would not load windows. It took all night to install the last update, and I don’t think that one went in properly. On restart it just comes up with black screen asking for the boot drive to be entered?? Used F8 and came up with a screen saying that it would scrub everything in it and go back to the factory restore point ***warning*** ***warning***. Just had to accept it and lose the lot to get the stupid thing to work. Reloaded windows from the disks and now C drive has only 39GB capacity, and D drive has gone from 1TB to 5GB?? What the hell has gone on there???

My computer keeps lagging since this update. I did a system restore and it auto updated again and again its lagging so I know its this update. It also wont let me create a new folder. How do I get around this?

My alienware windows 7 not only crashed, froze, and ended up on black screen but it also tells me that my windows is not legal when its actually windows provided from the alienware company . I have not even been able to do anything on it for a week and a half now.

Hi. After reading the latest post I understand I am not alone. I have a Toshiba Laptop running Windows XP, On thursday I started it and it took a huge amount of time to start and after that all seemed laggy. I thought well may be the hard drive got faulty (its a 6 years old, but very trustable so far laptop) I run chkdsk /f, it found a couple of issues and fix them, but after restart the computer was still laggy. Then I decided to check the restore point and noticed that an automatic update was made on wednesday (something related to Distribution services 3.0). I restored to the last point before that update and the laptop started to work normally again. I disabled Windows Update after, and I recommend to all XP users to do the same thing. Good Luck

Is anyone else having trouble connecting to the wireless printer after the Windows update in May 2013? I’m now unable to print or scan wirelessly with my Epson printer. I’ve tried re-installing the software, and tried adding a printer through Windows but neither have worked. I’m running Windows 7 64-bit edition.

First: Back up your current data BEFORE downloading new updates. Second: Disable automatic updates & wait a week or so BEFORE downloading new updates- by then the “brilliant minds” at microsoft will have worked out most of the glitches.

I am also having a recent problem (May 2013) where my wireless printer does not work. It’s on the network and my other computer prints to it but not this recently Windows-updated 7 (64 bit) OS.

After updates my pc has an anoying habbit of throwing me out of the screen. I will be typing away and then I get a loud bell sound (like just now GRRRR) and I cant type or move the mouse till I click the screen again. Its really pissing me off…. Its happened 6 times just writting this paragraph.

HELP.

Auto update on Toshiba Laptop W7 64. Cannot open any existing MS files and cannot save new ones. Restore fails…thanks M$ will be using Open Office again after finally coughing up the bucks for Office, Project and Outlook. Any Suggestions, can I uninstall the 14 updates?

Running windows 8 on 64bit, 8GB ram + plenty of power.
had the automatic update happen over the weekend and now the machine wont start chrome or firefox and take FOREVER to do a single task.
This is UNBELIEVABLE! MS sucks big time!
You got to think that those brilliant minds at MS get some bonuses from apple cause my next pc is an apple FOR SURE!

Read the last few months worth of comments and decided to provide some advice. I was a tech for 10+ years supporting hundreds of PCs and Macs

1) If at first you don’t succeed: If microsoft updates caused a problem and system restore (undoing the updates) removed the new problem, try to reinstall those update again. Sometimes it’s not a problem with the updates themselves but the installation of the updates. If the problem happens again, you can always undo again.

2) Which patch: If using system restore to undo a microsoft update patch session to resolve a new problem, try to narrow it down. Install the patches one at the time and test. Once you’ve got it narrow down to a specific patch, google that patch number or post it here with details of the problem.

3) Microsoft Updates patches Microsoft Product: Microsoft release patches for their own products. Like any product manufacturer that release firmware and software updates, microsoft runs the updates through a series of rigorous tests. They cannot test every combination of hardware / 3rd party software but they do extensive tests.

4) Posting details: Most compatibility issues with microsoft updates happens with low-level 3rd party software. When posting specific problems, include information such what firewall or anti-virus you’re using.

5) Slow computer after patches:

a) As always try system restore to confirm that it was a patch issue

b) Consider hardware as the point of failure. Use your manufacturer supplied diagnostics and do a check on the hard drive (full surface scan) and the memory (run several loops). Consider looking at the windows event log for disk error entries.

c) Bootleneck. If you computer is unusually slow, identify the bottleneck. The culprit is commonly disk access or the cpu. Use Resource Monitor to see which process is chewing up the disk I/O. Another way for disk performance issues, download Process Monitor from microsoft to see the real time read/write to the file system. For possible CPU issues, task manager is a quick and simple way to troubleshoot. For heavier troubleshooting, download Process Explorer from microsoft.

6) Corporate Support: A WSUS server is worth the investment in time simply for the ability to mass-remove patches on your client computers. On top of that you can also have the patches deployed immediately to some guinea pig users while delaying it for you everybody else. It’s a good way of testing the monthly patches on your corporate images.

Furthermore: Turning off Windows Update is a risky choice. Think of it as leaving you car unlock with your keys in the ignition, sooner or later, you’ll regret it

It’s easy to blame microsoft but with all my experience in the field, most of the time it’s a configuration issue, failing hardware, a fluke wu install session, or 3rd party software.

Since the May updates, I can’t do a manual check for updates. Eventually errors out. I ran the “Fix-It” tool, but it’s still unable to complete the check process. Is it possible something in the May updates broke this?

May updates have broken activation on Win 7 Ultimate corporate edition. Refuses to accept GENUINE key. Microsoft are just complete PLONKERS. After April updates preventing boot requiring reinstall, it now looks like I’ll have to reinstall AGAIN. It’s time some heads roll in their totally USELESS update department.

PC activation is supposed to HELP genuine customers NOT GIVE US MAJOR HEADACHES.