MS-DEFCON 4: As good as it gets

By Susan Bradley

There is never a time I consider perfect for updating your system.

Even if absolutely no issues were reported with updates, there might be side effects of the updating process itself.

But for now, for both consumers and businesses, it’s appropriate to lower the MS-DEFCON level to 4. I recommend installing updates.

How do you protect yourself from side effects? At the risk of sounding like a very broken record, there are three things you can do. First, always have that backup in place. Second, wait it out until you’re confident that all the issues with the updates themselves have been identified and sorted out. Finally, have another PC you can use to identify solutions — just in case your primary one gets in trouble.

Yesterday, I discussed some of the major items we are tracking this month. The one that grabbed the most headlines concerned Windows 10. Despite the news hype, the issue where the installation of KB5058379 would trigger a recovery boot — which in turn would trigger a request for the BitLocker recovery key — occurs only on PCs with an Intel vPro processor, 10th-generation or later. If that matches your situation, install KB5061768; you will need to manually download this from the catalog site, because it’s not handled by Windows update. Otherwise, you need take no action.

Consumers

In addition to installing security updates, it’s also a good time to consider installing the Windows 11 24H2 feature release if you have not already done so.

If updates are paused and you used InControl to keep your PC on 23H2, remember that InControl blocks only feature releases, not security updates. To fully control security updates and the feature releases offered to you, you must utilize a combination of both InControl and pausing updates via Windows update settings or with a tool such as wumgr.

Those of you with iPhones and iPads should also check your update status. Apple released iOS 18.5 and is performing a slow roll-out on systems. On the iPhone, it includes security updates. The 18.5 update allows users to easily access the All Mail inbox. You can more easily toggle between categorized inboxes and your complete email list. By the way, I have yet to find anyone who likes the categorized inbox. In fact, I’ve had several users complain that they can’t find an email. So then I point out that it’s really there — it’s just hiding in their new, filtered view. For those of you with older, 12.9-inch and 10.5-inch second-generation iPad pro devices and iPad sixth-generation, Apple released iOS 17.7.8.

Businesses

For businesses, 24H2 is still a mixed bag. I’ve seen several administrators indicate that they were still keeping 24H2 at bay and would not install it until it becomes absolutely necessary for support purposes. Many have complained about the loss of Internet access after updating. One solution is to remove the WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service (WinHttpAutoProxySvc) from dependency.

If you are in the process of rolling out Server 2025 as a Remote Desktop server and need the ability to print to PDF inside certain business applications, such as QuickBooks, be aware that Server 2025 isn’t exactly like Windows 11. Normally, you can fix this error in Windows 11 by going into Turn Windows features on or off and enabling the Microsoft XPS Document Writer. But if you attempt to do the same thing on Server 2025, you will find that option does not exist.

So how do you solve this problem? — By stealing the file from a Windows 11 machine and placing it onto Server 2025. This workaround is documented in a Microsoft Tech Community post.

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