Like it or not, here are ALL your October Microsoft patches

Re: Dear Microsoft.

Do let us know how your lawsuit goes on.

Just in case Microsoft also have a lawyer.

Re: Dear Microsoft.

Signed, a pissed off MS customer whom has a lawyer who, sorry whom, would laugh at working on a contingency basis so I'd be looking at $200 an hour billed in 15 min increments for every email, fax, and phone call he can dream up.

Good luck with that.

Re: Dear Microsoft.

Signed, a pissed off MS customer with a large axe and a maniacal expression?

Re: Dear Microsoft.

"Signed, a pissed off MS customer whom has a lawyer."

I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of commentards who (not whom) spotted that one but here's an upvote for a splendid rant.

Re: Dear Microsoft.

I can't afford to let it cripple my screen reader & YOU can't afford the lawsuit if you cause my computer to become unuseable.

These statements are mutually exclusive. They can't both be correct... I suspect it's the second one that'll trip you up if you try it.

Re: Is wheel-spinning replacing nagware as the new Windows 10 incentive?

"I'm guessing that this month it'll be a couple of days."

And shortly after that, your next scheduled payment will have to be made before the delays continue.

Re: Is wheel-spinning replacing nagware as the new Windows 10 incentive?

I had that problem too. So I manually downloaded and installed KB3172605. It fixed the problem. No more waiting for days for updates to download, no more 100% CPU usage by svchost.exe. But, of course, that fix broke Windows Server Essentials connector. This is the best backup program I've seen so I want to keep it working. So I removed KB3172605.

And the problem returned. So I disabled Windows Update, waited until the next patch Tuesday, and installed KB3172605 again. I made a note of which updates were out and uninstalled KB3172605. Surprisingly, the problem went away.

What was going on is that KB3172605 is a collection of patches, which included several updates that broke the Server Essentials connector. This is a Microsoft program, and Windows updates break it. Why can't Microsoft get their own programs to be compatible with their own updates?

Re: Is wheel-spinning replacing nagware as the new Windows 10 incentive?

Maybe you try fixing that with the fixes that fix that issue?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3125574

Re: Is wheel-spinning replacing nagware as the new Windows 10 incentive?

There is a fix here however if things are going to be rolled up into one giant ball of snot it's going to be a bit more difficult to fix when, not if, the slowdowns resume.

Re: This just in....Data limits for DSL and cable modem users

Someone from BT here in the UK will be sure to be telling us about their 'wonderful, massive, over generous, technically challenging' 10Mbps USO (only a 'requestable' Universal Service Obligation) in terms of this US 1TB Cap by Comcast.

A USO you can politely request (but no guarantee of getting) from BT in the UK which will probably see BT through till 2030 and see BT's browbeaten rural subscribers suffer indefinitely till then at least, when the last one still requesting/waiting will likely get enabled the day before that deadline (as install dates get moved further and further back. In the process, protecting their copper carcass, just on that promise)

Sounds a lot a 1TB Cap, BT would tell you with a 10Mbps BT USO you could download 1TB 'cap' over 10 days (if you're lucky), fully utilising a 10Mbps connection, working flat out 24/7.

If you get say 4Mbps-8Mbps on a good day, are you really going to go to all that trouble of requesting 10Mbps, to be told its £15,000 to get to 10Mbps. BT know this, thats why they aren't objecting to the {pointless} 'requestable' 10Mbps USO.

Hope the Government realise how long unpatched Windows machines will sit connected to the internet downloading Microsoft/Apple Updates, with their drive towards Gov eServices.

Generous 'requestable' crumbs at best, make do you Rural Plebs!

Re: This just in....Data limits for DSL and cable modem users

"Yes, you heard it here. In one instance Comcast has put in a 1Tbyte limit"

How are you supposed to cope with that?!

I download at least 1 TB a week. That's only approx. 2MB a sec. on average - so nothing really in terms of speed / bandwidth.

Re: so do these new patch bundles

I can't say for sure if they do or not, but there were four patches listed in my Updates window & at least one of them was One Hundred Nineteen megabytes. If that's any indication of things to come then it appears as if MS has indeed put all their eggs in one basket & opted to ram that bastard down our throats.

Re: so do these new patch bundles

NT 4.0 got all the way up to Service Pack 6a!

Re: so do these new patch bundles

Want more fun? Try upgrading IE8 to IE11. (The IE11 download page rejects IE8 visits...)

Re: so do these new patch bundles

The plan is to add older patches to the latest rollup, so installing a new machine and patching it should require less patches to install. This also mean the rollup grow larger and larger. Windows Update (and WSUS, if set so) can also use "express" installation files that should be smaller.

When installing from an old CD, it's usually better to install the required service pack from a downloaded setup, otherwise Windows Update will install anyway a bunch of patch before the service pack. Same for IE, otherwise Windows will first patch the installed version, and only later will display the availability of the latest version.

Don't know how long you used NT4, but in those years (1996-99) Linux was really far worse too than it is today, NT4 for the time was a solid OS (we were running it mostly on IBM hardware, back then), and, but the big SCSI bug in SP3 (or 4?) never really had issues.

Re: so do these new patch bundles

The Cumulative KBs via Windows Update will be delta patches (download sizes will match the machines requirements, to what earlier Cumulative Monthly KBs are installed) .

The offline downloadable Cumulative KBs through the Windows Catalog will be in 'roll up' form, i.e. include all Cumulative Monthly KBs from now on, like say Apple Combo 10.11.6 Patch, all updates from 10.11.0 to 10.11.6.

Re: so do these new patch bundles

so do these new patch bundles really include everything ?

Yes. They even include the ones that will bluescreen your system because you cannot forego a decades old tradition, and the sheer volume of downloads worldwide is likely to be equivalent of a DDoS attack on the whole Interwebs.

It is the Trump of software: a lot of noise, frightfully offensive and absolutely not interested in your actual needs unless pretending means more votes sales.

They're not "patches"

...not in the patch(1) sense, anyway. A one-line change in a big library means shipping the whole recompiled binary.

Re: Offering Odds

I can't think of a single small business that doesn't have at least one blackballed patch that breaks something operationally critical.

Re: Offering Odds

I reckon those odds will go down over time, because more people will be starting from fully patched systems (which is the only thing MS tests against), rather than one where they've patched things at random based on the phase of the moon and some dubious advice they misinterpreted on a forum somewhere.

Re: Windows 7 Updates 12 hour window of opportunity.

You think the NSA / GCHQ / ImmunitySec can reverse an update, find the vuln, and develop and deploy a reliable, weaponised exploit in 12 hours?

I fear you are mistaken.

So much easier for them to have their own vuln dev groups -- a redundant array of inexpensive Tavis Ormandys. Well, wannabe Tavises -- there's only one T.O. ...

Re: Windows 7 Updates 12 hour window of opportunity.

For the downvoters, you really haven't heard of:

ZERODIUM - The Premium Exploit Acquisition Platform

www.zerodium.com/

Exploits which are bought for a price (in the millions) and sold to Governments to exploit at their leisure, including NSA/GCHQ.

Re: Is this it?

Its a crazy town with one hell of a marketing budget, some would say a bottomless pit.

Re: Microsoft split brain: WSUS can't now automatically approve only the security patch

I wouldn't risk having ANYTHING set to automatically approve, madness!

I have a sub set of servers and workstations (VM's) that I use just for testing updates, and NEVER roll them out on day one!

And this ISN'T just a windows issue, patch management for the MILLION + 1 Linux distros is FAR, FAR worse. Our Linux's support guys have many more problems with their Linux workstations that we do with our Windows ones and they have a quarter of the number

Microsoft empty promises: IE still required for Update Catalog

The blog post which announced the patching overhaul, with the juicily Doublespeak title "Further simplifying servicing models for W7/8.1", stated that a separate security-only patch set would be available each month, although not via Windows Update, but the semi-obscure Microsoft Update Catalog, then and now a throwback to the early noughties which requires IE and ActiveX (yes, that ActiveX) for what is basically a glorified FTP server.

The "and now" part is pertinent: the same blog post promised that the ActiveX requirement will be removed "soon". Two months later, it still isn't: try visiting the site in anything but IE, and it will redirect you to a page saying that IE is required. Er, Microsoft? Are you trying to make this deliberately difficult for those who don't want to be force-fed the whole opaque load of unrelated crap? (The question is rhetorical, obviously.)

What's even more astounding is that the non-IE promise is not even new: here's an earlier incarnation (scroll down a couple of paragraphs), plus a workaround for non-IE browsers. The "screw you, we're Microsoft" spirit is as strong as ever over at Redmond.

Re: How big?

Well, you can go into your network settings and say you have a metered connection. That will disable automatic updates in Windows 10.

Or if you have any other version of Windows 10 besides Home, you can disable automatic updates using the group policy editor.