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 ...
Dang! Was this supposed to fix the messed up fonts/characters I’ve been seeing on FR lately?
No, but this thread will help with that:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3359105/posts
Especially this link:
Have already experienced Outlook crashing many times under Windoze 8.1. HATE IT
Odd though this sounds, I'd recommend that you do a full backup and upgrade your OS to Windows 10, and then turn off the spyware User Experience Enhancement Features.
In my experience, Windows 10 is MUCH more usable than Win8 or Win8.1, and more stable. Granted, I still like Win7 better, but if one is already in the depths of Win8.x, I would go to Win10 and not look back.
But for God's sake, do a full backup first.
Bookmark
Okay, I hate to sound completely stupid, but what is “Outlook”?
I got the update late last night, but my laptop is okay...except that it is a bit slower.
Outlook is the email/calendar application in the Microsoft Office suite.
Ugh. Too late.
You lost me.
I guess that I don’t have anything to worry about? Since I still don’t know what this is, I don’t think I have it.
I tried loading Outlook 2010 in “Safe Mode With Networking” to make sure that no non-Microsoft programs were at fault.
Received this message in Safe Mode:
“Microsoft Office cannot verify the license for this Application [Outlook 2010]. A repair attempt failed or was cancelled by the user [I didn't cancel anything, so auto-repair failed]. The application will now shut down.”
I restored my system software to a time point before today's auto-update, but after yesterday's auto-update.
My computer works fine now.
I've used Windows for 20 years, and this is only the second issue I've had with an auto-update.
Several years ago, I received an update that wouldn't configure, but I did a work-around and installed it straight from the Windows website, and it worked fine.
Anyone know if Microsoft has announced a patch for this?
My computer keeps trying to download a Windows update, but I won't allow it, because I don't if it's the defective update, or a repair for the defective update.
That is not correct.
The free Outlook.com website (which is the “new” Hotmail.com) works just fine. You can still receive and send your email from there.
The problem is with the Microsoft Office Suite email software, which is confusingly called Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013.
That software requires a paid subscription and offers a platform that is superior to the free Outlook.com site.
I use Thunderbird for my home email - of course I'm not connecting with an Outlook server...
Got mine yesterday and flipped outlook immediately.
Found the fix via a spiceworks.com post.
This is why we patch on +30. Any FReepers still using “Automatic Updates” should 1) be ashamed of themselves and 2) configure them to Notify instead of install.
No. This was specific to Outlook. Per the KB:
This security update was rereleased on November 11, 2015 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to resolve an issue where crashes occurred in all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook when users were reading certain emails.
Time for the FR software writers to include the special left and right single and double quotes to the list.
Thanks for the thread on this. I just pulled this KB from SCCM so it doesn’t roll out to my company. We have 3 update phases and today was just the test phase rollout so it was caught in time for me.
Outlook has always been a virus magnet. Killing it is a feature not a bug.
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