Posted on 09/30/2015 10:00:37 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
If you're still on Windows 7 and received a notification for an update with a very uncommon and suspicious name, don't worry, it's just Microsoft testing the update service.
The company has mistakenly released a test patch to Windows 7 consumers, making everyone believe that the Update service got hacked and now users are infected with malware.
There are hundreds of posts everywhere you look online pointing to this patch which, let's be honest, doesn't look at all as a legitimate Windows update. Its name is a long string of random letters and numbers and its description says absolutely nothing about the things it attempts to patch, so people were worried that Microsoft's servers got compromised and the company's Windows Update service is now being used to spread malware.
Despite the worries, some people actually tried to install the patch, but the process failed because Microsoft rapidly removed it from its servers.
And in a statement released shortly after that, the company confirmed that it “mistakenly” pushed the 4.3MB update to consumers and that it was just an internal test patch that was supposed to be available only for its own PCs.
Microsoft tight-lipped despite so many worries
Microsoft hasn't detailed the release of this test update too much beside the fact that it was an accidental patch rollout, so there still are plenty of users out there who believe that their laptops and PCs were compromised.
“We had the update repeatedly show up as available and repeatedly it failed (never blindly accept updates. However seems to have gone, but we NEED to know what it was. Has the laptop been compromised? Just a short answer will do,” one user wrote on the company's Community forums.
So no, you're computer hasn't been compromised and you're as safe as before this patch, so just ignore it and you should be all fine.
Accept the notifications but don’t allow automatic updates.
That has worked for Me. Windows 7 has been a great system on my two 4 quad computers each with 4 gigs ram since 2002 when I built them.
I’m sticking with win7 until MS is pushing the next big thing. Then I may build another two computers.
Desk tops. I am planning on installing Lynix and make one of my current ones a dual boot machine just to explore options.
For those who have switched up to Win 10 how are your device drivers complications been going? I guess they have carried on the one from seven fairly well?
Correction in 2002/I was still running XP and clung to if for as long as I could until confident in Win 7
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