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Microsoft's Emergency Internet Explorer Patch Renders Some Lenovo Laptops Unbootable (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the watch-out dept.

Earlier this month, Microsoft issued an emergency patch for Internet Explorer to fix a zero-day vulnerability in the web browser. The problem affects versions of Internet Explorer from 9 to 11 across multiple versions of Windows, but it seems that the patch has been causing problems for many people. Specifically, people with some Lenovo laptop have found that after installing the KB4467691 patch they are unable to start Windows, reports BetaNews.

6 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. WTF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If an OS stops booting because of a web browser then you know it's built on shit coding practices.

    1. Re:WTF by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If an OS stops booting because of a web browser then you know it's built on shit coding practices.

      That depends on your objectives. If you want a system to be secure and robust, then it is shitty practice. If you want to maximize profit based on customer lock-in to a complex integrated monolithic system, it is good practice.

      Microsoft made $110B in profit during the last fiscal year. That is up 14% on a year earlier, and a record high.

  2. Laptop is bootable, Windows is not... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remove Windows, install real OS. Problem solved.

  3. Because Microsoft tied IE directly into the OS by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    so they could skirt around European anti-trust rules that said they couldn't bundle a competitive product with an unrelated product (since that would be an abuse of their defacto OS monopoly). This way they could go to the EU and say "See, it's not that we're bundling IE with Windows in order to leverage our monopoly and break open Internet standards, it's just every so crucial to our OS". Worked too. The downside is everytime IE breaks it takes everything with it.

    Take a bad engineering decision by Microsoft and you'll almost always fine evil, and not incompetence, at the heart of it.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  4. I just don't understand how that's possible by arcctgx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So according to https://support.microsoft.com/... it's:

    1. Vendor-specific (Lenovo only)
    2. Dependent on the amount of memory (systems with less than 8 GB of RAM are affected)
    3. Somehow related to Secure Boot (disabling Secure Boot is listed as a workaround)

    And all the trouble is caused by patching a web browser (however deeply integrated with the operating system)? What the hell?

  5. Re:Bad design indicates insufficient management. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I disagree. It's more likely that some Lenovo crapware had it's hooks into Windows AND IE and when Microsoft fixed the issue, the Lenovo crapware broke the system. Let's not forget Superfish....

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_incident