Posted on 11/11/2015 8:14:59 PM PST by dayglored
The El Reg inbox has been flooded with reports of a serious cock-up by Microsoft's patching squad, with one of Tuesday's fixes causing killer problems for Outlook.
"We are looking into reports from some customers who are experiencing difficulties with Outlook after installing Windows KB 3097877. An immediate review is under way," a Microsoft spokesperson told us.
The problem is with software in one of the four critical patches issued in yesterday's Patch Tuesday bundle – MS15-115. This was supposed to fix a flaw in the way Windows handles fonts, but has had some unexpected side effects for some Outlook users.
"Today I've deployed latest Outlook patch to all of my clients, and now Outlook is crashing every 10 minutes and then restarting itself. I tried on fresh Win10, no AV with latest patches applied and here we go, Outlook crashing there too," complained one TechNet user.
"Come on guys, do you EVER do proper QA before releasing anything Office 2013 related? This is the worst version of Outlook ever. Sorry for negative attitude but this is how things are."
The break point appears to come not when an email that contains certain fonts is opened, but when it's scrolled through. Outlook 2010 and 2007 seem affected, but the issue is reportedly fixed when the patch is uninstalled.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
One of my co-workers, whose Win 7 was set to auto updates, fell prey to the bad update. I uninstalled it and rebooted (without shutting off auto update) and it promptly was re-installed and crashed Outlook. Next I shut off auto update and uninstalled then rebooted. That solved the problem and I could hide the update so it doesn't mess with Outlook again.
That said, I need to know how to get rid of it entirely so I make sure I get the re-released update when I manually run Windows Update again.
Anyone??
They won’t release it with the same KB. It’ll be released with a new KB designation and marked to supersede the previous install. You’ll get it when it comes out. No worries.
Not so; posters on spiceworks.com say they re-released it with the same KB number and no obvious indication it was a re-release.
Below is the link to the spiceworks thread:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1286643-outlook-2010-2013-kb3097877-don-t-install
That’s not like them. I’ll check my WSUS environment. The problem with that is if admins, like me, decline the distribution of the patch to the environment, it declines the patch based on the KB number. When they do re-releases of patches, they mark the previous patch as superseded. I don’t see any superseded patches with the same KB number, so I have to imagine something’s not right.
The above link says this about the update:
This security update was rereleased on November 11, 2015, for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to resolve the following issues:
Resolves crashing that occurred in all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook when users were reading certain emails.
Resolves problems that occurred while users were logging on to the system. For example, after a user restarted the computer and then pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete at the logon screen, the screen flashed and then went black. The user was then unable to continue. There may be other, similar logon issues that are related to this issue.
I think I found the answer. I’ll download the re-released version directly from the Microsoft Download Center and hope it will replace the other version.
Son-of-a-gun. They changed the information. I’m looking right at the declined update in my WSUS system, and it says something completely different.
FWIW, I haven’t see an update come through that supersedes the bad one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.