Microsoft Patch Alert: February's fixes aren’t as bad as last month, but problems abound

[Karlston]

All is not well. The Win10 Fall Creators Update cumulative update is bluescreening some PCs  and dropping USB connections for many — and there’s a bug in the Win7 Monthly Rollups that cause a boot-to-black.

Thinkstock/Microsoft

The January 2018 Microsoft patching cycle may have been the worst and most invasive set of Microsoft releases in recent memory. The February updates, by marked contrast, only clobber a limited number of machines. How many? We don’t know — and Microsoft isn’t saying.

Bad Win10 Fall Creators Update patch

What we do know for sure is that the buggy Win10 Fall Creators Update cumulative update KB 4074588 tossed many PCs into bluescreen hell and disabled USB devices of various stripes. That’s quite an accomplishment for version 1709 which, according to AdDuplex, is now said to run on 85% of all Windows 10 machines. To look at it a different way, Microsoft blew the cumulative update to the most-used version (1709) of the most-used Windows (Win10 now surpasses Win7).

 

It took Microsoft 10 days to admit to the bugs. Finally, on Feb. 23, it appended these items to the KB article. There’s no additional notification, of course – if you figured out what caused your problem, and figured the KB article would have some information, here’s what you eventually got:

 

After installing this update, some USB devices and onboard devices, such as a built-in laptop camera, keyboard or mouse, may stop working.  This may occur when the windows update servicing stack incorrectly skips installing the newer version of some critical drivers in the cumulative update and uninstalls the currently active drivers during maintenance.

 

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release. Workaround steps are available in KB4091240.

 

After installing this update, some devices may fail to boot with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

 

This issue occurs when the windows update servicing stack incorrectly skips installing the newer version of some critical drivers in the cumulative update and uninstalls the currently active drivers during maintenance.

 

Microsoft is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release. Workaround steps are available in KB4075150.

 

As you might imagine, both manual workarounds require an advanced degree in Microsoft Patch bugology.

 

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Source: Microsoft Patch Alert: February's fixes aren’t as bad as last month, but problems abound (Computerworld - Woody Leonhard)

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