What’s going on with the “INTEL – System” patches?

[Karlston]

(Poster's note... reported to be breaking systems (read comments), so beware)

 

I’ve seen a long line of complaints about Windows Update’s patches called “INTEL – System” followed by a date and time. My original beef was with “INTEL – System – 8/19/2016 12:00:00 AM – 10.1.2.80.” As I described in my InfoWorld post last week, Günter Born tore apart that patch and concluded that they installed “null” (do-nothing) drivers as placeholders for different motherboard components. He also warns against installing the patches – which are coming down the Automatic Update chute.

 

Since then, there have been many reports of another INTEL – System driver, this one “INTEL – System – 10/3/2016 12:00:00 AM – 10.1.1.38” and a wide variety of driver updates have appeared, documented here.

 

Poster jmwoods here made some more experiments, looking inside those patches, and another “INTEL – System” patch, dated 3/13/2016. Here’s what he reports:

Set up a test environment, installed the 2 new Intel driver updates, and ran DISM to get the list of all drivers for the online OS…

 

dism /online /get-drivers /all /format:table > “%userprofile%\Desktop\drivers.txt”

 

The output will be created in the file “drivers.txt” on your desktop.

 

The Intel driver INF files affected…by date –

 

3/13/16 –

 

iccwdt.inf – version 11.0.0.1010

 

8/19/2016 –

 

haswellsystem.inf – version 10.1.2.80
lynxpointsystem.inf – version 10.1.2.80

 

10/3/2016 –

 

haswellsystem.inf – version 10.1.1.38
lynxpointsystem.inf – version 10.1.1.38

 

(appears to be a rollback)

He also speculates:

Could have something to do with this big list of bugs for 4th Gen Haswell chipsets…

 

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification-updates/4th-gen-core-family-desktop-specification-update.pdf

 

See the Errata section.

ch100 has speculated that the patches might be related to the Bluetooth problems with the KB 3172605 patch – the key July speed-up patch.

 

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3136677/microsoft-windows/how-to-speed-up-windows-7-update-scans-forever.html

 

He also speculates that:

It may also mean that those somehow newer drivers can facilitate a better upgrade experience from lower versions of Windows to Windows 10 by having dual compatibility. Just speculation, I don’t know about anything documented in that sense.

So my question is… does anybody know what’s going on? It took Microsoft more than a year to fix the driver/firmware bugs in the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, and that debacle is widely attributed to bugs in the 2015-vintage Skylake chipset. Are we seeing something similar for the older (2013) Haswell chipsets? If so, it doesn’t inspire confidence in the recently announced Kaby Lake chips, which will be at the center of a new round of Windows PCs that are just appearing on the market.

 

Source: What’s going on with the “INTEL – System” patches? (AskWoody)

[straycat19]

If you read the articles one even mentions some speculation that this is a preemptive strike to force Windows 7 and 8.1 users to Windows 10 and will act like a switch when they activate it so your system will no longer run.  Someone said Microsoft wouldn't do that but then remembered 'Get Windows 10'.  I don't trust Microsoft, and neither does Woody, who advised not to install some of the earlier patches.  But with the cumulative updates you don't have an option to pick and choose so they can release them anytime and there is nothing the user can do to stop it.  Paranoid, maybe  just a little, but then Microsoft has proven when it comes to Windows you can never be paranoid enough.