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Microsoft .NET Patch May Make PCs Go "Haywire"
yuna49 writes "Various people are reporting that the MS07-040 patch for .NET released on Tuesday can cause a variety of seemingly unrelated problems. According to the SANS Internet Storm Center 'the reports we got so far seem not to lead to any specific thing that happens in many cases, just various things going haywire.' Some commentators on The Register's report of this story indicate that the patch failed to install at all, while others report things like the mouse suddenly failing to work or long periods of hard drive thrashing. In some cases a hard reboot seems to fix the problem, but other reports suggest that a reinstallation of the .NET framework itself is required. The problems may be related to the MSCORSVW.EXE process which recompiles all the .NET assemblies when the patch is downloaded. While the recompilations are supposed to run as a background task, in some instances the recompilation will drive the processor to 100% usage."
A background task that's taking 100% cpu is perfectly fine, so long as it is a background task and is running on a below normal priority.
I frequently make processes that run at 100% CPU run as a background task.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
No, it's just an uncommon issue. On the NT admin mailing lists I'm on, only a handful of people have reported problems. Most responses to the thread have been "1000 systems patched here, no problems reported" and the like.
The patch is also nearly 15 MB, which is huge for a patch. Some people have just been having problems with their AV scanners locking the file to scan while Automatic Updates wants to begin installing it (see MS KB 883825). That's not a MS issue. It's arguably not even an AV vendor issue. Mostly it's an issue with admins not excluding the updates download directory.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.