'Recommended' Windows 7 Update Is Breaking PCs With ASUS Motherboards (betanews.com)

Microsoft has made a bizarre tweak to an update for Windows 7 that can prevent some systems from booting. The Windows 7 update KB3133977 was switched from 'Optional' to 'Recommended' and Microsoft knew ahead of time the update would cause problems for some users but decided to do nothing about it. The update fixes a problem that stops BitLocker encrypting drives because of service crashes in svhost.exe. The update only causes a problem with ASUS motherboards. Microsoft says, "After you install update 3133977 on a Windows 7 x64-based system that includes an ASUS-based main board, the system does not start, and it generates a Secure Boot error on the ASUS BIOS screen. This problem occurs because ASUS allowed the main board to enable the Secure Boot process even though Windows 7 does not support this feature." The update wasn't causing many issues while it was optional. But now that it's recommended, more users have downloaded the update, and more users have experienced problems with the update. ASUS has provided a solution to the problem. Microsoft has also provided a solution, but you might not like it. Their solution in a nutshell: update to Windows 10.

Comments

Not the first time they've done this

[blindseer]

When I was in college I worked as a computer tech for a print and video publishing department of the university. They had a large number of Macintosh computers running Microsoft software. This was back in the day when Apple was making their transition to PowerPC processors.

The version of Microsoft Word available at the time was known to be crash happy and a new version had just come out or was going to be released soon. An interesting bug in the program would delete open files if saved too often and it would prevent saving the file under a different name. If someone reached this save limit then the file was effectively lost. It remained in memory so long as the file was open but it could not be saved to disk. At best it might be able to print it.

This was an interesting bug when it came to me and I was responsible to resolve the problem for the people working in the department. Microsoft just told people to get the next version. As this was a bug that hit an OS limitation it was possible to reduce the probability of hitting the bug by upgrading the OS. If your computer did not meet the system requirements for the next OS version, or the next Word version, the solution was buying a new computer. Every solution that Microsoft offered was going to cost money. One might place some blame on Apple for this but the problem was that Word had a memory leak, upgrading the computer or OS just meant that it was much more difficult to hit the limit before Word locked you out of saving your files and deleted what was already on the disk. When I presented the "solutions" to my supervisor I was instructed to remove Word from the affected computers, meaning the student employees had to switch around computers to get their work done.

At around this same time Microsoft had released a new version of Office. Because of some delays in publishing Microsoft offered the old version of Office to people that bought the new version, which on some level was fortunate for me. I installed the new version of Office and tried to run Word but any attempt to open an existing file or create a new one would immediately crash the computer. Complaints to Microsoft was answered with the options of using the old version or getting a new computer that did not expose this bug. As I already had a working copy of WordPerfect I only bought Office so that I could use the latest version of Word since I was getting files that were in that format. WordPerfect was IMHO a much better program and could already open the older Word files. My only consolation was that I got Excel out of the deal which came in handy for some of my math and engineering homework. I could have used other software to get the homework done but Excel was easier at the time.

Re:Another solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are just shifting the problem, not solving it

As opposed to what option? Microsoft wants users to upgrade to Win10. Some users don't want to. So what alternatives are there?

1. Get new software to provide what you need. (May require relearning your workflow if it's interface is too different than what you are used to.)

2. Get new versions of existing software for your new system. (If OSS / freeware not much of an issue here, but if it's proprietary, expect to pay for it again. Regardless, this assumes that there IS a version of that software for the new system.)

3. Run the existing software in a VM. (Not the best option unless you have the storage space to spare for the VM. Also assumes you are not using anything that's CPU / GPU intensive. The GPU in particular will have issues in VMs, as it requires support in the VM software to work and not all VM software gives good GPU support. (Games in particular are an issue.))

4. Run the existing software in some API wrapper. (That has it's own issues, as people expect the API wrapper to "just work", where as in reality the API wrapper has to be configured correctly and most people refuse to even bother with it. Not to mention the API wrapper has to support the APIs used by the software or support enough of the APIs to allow a workaround to be used. (Installing needed codecs from the target API vs using the API wrapper to access the system's codecs for example.))

Those are the options if you don't want to (or are unable to) use the new update / version from the developer. If anything, the fact that people would consider moving away from their current software typically means it's developer has screwed up enough that moving elsewhere is the easier option.

Developers need to remember that if they want others to use their software, they have to please those other people. Microsoft has apparently forgotten this, and will pay the price for it. More and more people are moving to smart devices (a market Microsoft has no real influence in.), businesses need control over their workstations (and Microsoft keeps taking that control away, while simultaneously installing spyware on the machines of those who WILL CARE about them doing so.), computer nerds like control and customization of their systems (they left along time ago, or are holding on to the old version as long as they can.), and finally, people in general don't like being forced to trust someone who doesn't trust them. (Secure Boot enforces that situation, while Microsoft keeps abusing it.)

Many people would prefer that Microsoft stopped with their BS, but unless you have access to Microsoft's source code / are an old school ASM hacker (and have Microsoft's signing keys for Secure Boot enabled systems), you can't change anything, and Microsoft seems perfectly happy to keep chugging along with abusing it's user-base. So unfortunately because "solving the problem" is not possible, "shifting the problem" is all that can be done.