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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)
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.
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?
Turn off auto updates
Check for updates by hand
Only if the update was at least a week old update at a time of my choosing
Of course when I tried this on windows 10 check for updates is now check for the latest alpha updates and immediately apply them.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
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.
Experienced this issue with remote desktop which the update killed. Found others were experiencing the same. Uninstall the update and remote desktop works again.
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.
I didn't with SE, but your experience was dependent on the quality of your hardware drivers. There were no guard rails there, and lots of drivers that weren't reliable especially when in combination with other iffy drivers. (One can break the rules without symptoms, several breaking the rules shows you why they're there. Vendors don't care when the user doesn't have a way to know they're responsible)
Should happen sometime in the next six months.
64 hours was fine. The figure you're thinking about is 49 days.
A 64-hour limit would've been a major issue. A month and a half, however...well, 98 already had enough problems that already made it unlikely you'd ever run it for that long for *that* issue to be a problem.
> Maybe for non-power users. Who let every JS ad script run by default and open every email attachment without a care.
Careless users are a problem, a mostly separate problem. No it is needed. The MTC figure I mentioned is for an unpatched Windows machine simply connected to the internet, with no user doing anything.
One thing stupid users can do is turn off automatic updates on Windows. Another stupid thing that stupid users can do is enable (or leave enabled) UPnP. Those two combine to virtually guarantee the machine is compromised quite quickly.