MS-DEFCON 4: A quiet December

By Susan Bradley

I’m hoping that the relatively well-behaved December updates are a good omen for the upcoming patching year.

Given that December was quiet and many Microsoft employees are taking a holiday break, applying updates now is likely to be safe. Accordingly, I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level to 4.

Part of my reasoning is that the December patches were Windows security updates, with feature updates limited to a minor Office update. I was not expecting many side effects, which proved to be the case. For consumers, these updates should be a nice Christmas gift. The only possible lump of coal is the rollout of Copilot, but most of you have been reporting that it has not yet been pushed to you. Of course, expect dribbles in the coming year.

Microsoft did present a special gift — a fix for the annoying installation of the HP Smart app. KB5034510 provides a troubleshooting tool to rid our computers of the app, which was pushed to many unmanaged computers, even if they did not have an HP printer installed. Microsoft has not acknowledged what happened to make many of us receive this unexpected and silent installation, but my guess is that someone in charge of updating and deployment didn’t set the targeting correctly. You can still manually uninstall it, but I’m very glad to see that a more automated solution has been provided. However, it’s not quite as easy to use as I would like. As the instructions note, you can’t just click on the link and let the troubleshooter run; you have to run it from the command line.

Download the troubleshooter and then perform the following steps:

Unfortunately, the program is not perfect. On one of my home PCs that used to have an HP printer, the troubleshooting tool did not remove the HP Smart app. It appears that manual removal is the only solution in such a case.

For businesses, I’ve seen feedback that the results were less than ideal. One user of the troubleshooting tool indicated that the only good way to clean up the leftover mess was to reinstall the printers.

Speaking of printers, Microsoft is announcing its plans to make long-term changes in how printing and printer drivers work. In a recent Tech Community post, A new, modern, and secure print experience from Windows, an engineer from the Microsoft Offensive Research & Security Engineering (MORSE) team described the company’s plan to implement the Windows Protected Print mode (WPP) that is based on the widely supported Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). WPP will soon be enabled by default in Windows. Importantly, Microsoft support for third-party printer drivers will be phased out by 2027. There are a lot of links in this paragraph, but I encourage AskWoody readers to take a close look at Microsoft’s position and plans.

Although Microsoft’s explanation of WPP makes sense and acknowledges the disruption the change may cause, I’m a bit skeptical. I am convinced that no one — other than perhaps one accountant in a back room somewhere in the bowels of Microsoft — prints anything anymore. This is why the printing experience is less than ideal. Between printer drivers that don’t work well to Microsoft mistakenly pushing out the HP Smart app, the state of printing needs a lot of work. I’ll be keeping an eye on Microsoft’s plans and reporting more on this in the future.

I recommend that you install the December updates if you have not done so already. Before and after installing updates, make a backup of the hard drive.

Sometimes you shouldn’t pay too much attention to that event log hiding in your computer. Plus member Tex265 posted that his event log was flooded with events 131 and 201. Although the flood may be annoying, these errors do not cause performance errors and are “cosmetic” in nature. I think it’s better to wait for Microsoft to fix the underlying issue. But be sure to use Windows’ Feedback Hub to report the problem. Microsoft eventually gets around to fixing these types of issues.

I haven’t noted any other major issues in this month’s updates. Therefore, I recommend installing updates now.

I’m going to be a bit more cautious about the business case and recommend rolling back or even redeploying.

Be aware of possible issues with Qualcomm QCA61x4a, seen often on school computers connecting to wireless access points. Windows 11 computers may experience this issue after installing KB5033375 on either 22H2 or 23H2. Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and has initiated a known-issue rollback to fix the underlying problem.

Note that machines connecting to home wireless access points were not impacted by this issue. It affected only businesses and educational institutions with a more corporate-based access point, as described in Microsoft’s release dashboard. This indicates that events Microsoft can easily fix are acknowledged in about a week after the release of the updates. Thus I recommend waiting and not installing updates right away.

There are also a few reports of Explorer and the taskbar breaking on Windows 11 PCs. In testing my Home and Pro workstations, I am not seeing this issue. Given the reports in the education forum where I noticed this, more often than not it is triggered by software unique to that location. But it’s once again a reminder to those using tools to edit or adjust File Explorer or menu systems that those tools be kept up to date.

I’ll be dedicating an entire column to a review of the patching challenges for business in 2023 as well as potential pitfalls that we may see in 2024. Stay tuned for a look back and a look forward.

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