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Windows 7 Users Who Installed January Update Report Network Issues; Some Say the Update Has Also Incorrectly Flagged Their OS License as 'Not Genuine' (itpro.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the not-again dept.

Some Windows 7 admins are feeling the pain of Microsoft's latest updates in this week's Patch Tuesday releases. From a report: Users who've installed this Tuesday's KB4480970 cumulative January update have been complaining of network connectivity issues on those devices based on a network that uses the SMBv2 file sharing protocol. Microsoft released its update to fix several identified vulnerabilities, including a remote execution flaw in PowerShell and to add robustness against side-channel attacks like those targeting the Meltdown and Spectre flaws. But a number of users immediately complained of networking issues, with Microsoft confirming there are now three known problems with the January patch. The other issues comprise an authentication error, and a file-sharing issue affecting some user accounts. ZDNet adds: Regarding the 'Not Genuine' Windows 7 error, Microsoft confirms that "some users are reporting the KMS Activation error, 'Not Genuine', 0xc004f200 on Windows 7 devices". "We are aware of this incident and are presently investigating it. We will provide an update when available," writes Microsoft on both KB4480960 and KB4480970.

4 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Just patches? by omnichad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These "patches"are getting to be almost as complex as the feature updates. Why would security updates be changing so much? Even mitigating a complex attack shouldn't require a registry hack to fix broken functionality.

    Looks like Home and Pro users are guinea pigs for more than just the semi annual updates now. How did this even make it out of testing?

    1. Re:Just patches? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think MS just does not care anymore about ordinary users. Sure, they are incompetent and their products never were good, but what is recently happening with win7 and win10 is way beyond that.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Sadly, I doubt them ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At this point, it's difficult to distinguish Microsoft's own ineptness where they put out updates that break things, and actively trying to break those systems so people have to upgrade.

    Unfortunately, after many years in the industry, I have learned with Microsoft to never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to malice.

    My cynical view here is that someone issued a directive to break Windows 7. I could be wrong, but I don't extend the goodwill to Microsoft to assume I am.

  3. Any fix for slow SMB? by snapsnap · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I copied a 2 GB file, and it took nearly threee weeks. It finally completed and the md5sum checked out, but that's ridiculous. I don't need to access our Windows file share often, but some of my coworkers do. It's driving them nuts.