Born: Windows Defender isn’t getting updates

Not sure of the cause, but it looks like Windows Defender for Win7 is broken.

Details on Günter Born’s Borncity blog.

UPDATE: Vess Bontchev confirms and Kevin Beaumont says he’s bringing in the Windows Defender Security unit.

Windows Update no longer updates Windows Defender on Windows 7 machines, yo. Last such update was on June 18. Nothing changed at my end firewall- or installation-wise. It's Microsoft's doing.https://t.co/C8G2BZaUh3

— Vess (@VessOnSecurity) June 30, 2018

Can you hear me now?

As the twitter account for Comcast notes:

One of Comcast’s large backbone network partners had a fiber cut that we believe is also impacting other providers. It is currently affecting our business and residential internet, video and voice customers. We apologize & are working to get services restored as soon as possible

— ComcastCares (@comcastcares) June 29, 2018

Ouch.

We are having a slight problem… or rather they are.  East Coast and West Coast are impacted.

(and yes I realize that the title is the catch phrase for Verizon, but it was the best I could think of as a catchy phrase for indicating that some of you might be suffering from a lack of Askwoody and think it’s the site having issues and not you)

With Sets now jettisoned, the worthwhile feature list for the next version of Windows is vanishing

Microsoft has officially announced that “Sets” — the feature that lets you use tabs inside any Windows window — won’t appear in the next version of Win10, known as RS5 and likely called 1809.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Mary Jo Foley had a good, quick introduction to a demo version of Sets, seven months ago.

Dona Sarkar and Brandon LeBlanc say about yesterday’s beta, build 17704:

General changes, improvements, and fixes for PC

Thank you for your continued support of testing Sets. We continue to receive valuable feedback from you as we develop this feature helping to ensure we deliver the best possible experience once it’s ready for release. Starting with this build, we’re taking Sets offline to continue making it great. Based on your feedback, some of the things we’re focusing on include improvements to the visual design and continuing to better integrate Office and Microsoft Edge into Sets to enhance workflow. If you have been testing Sets, you will no longer see it as of today’s build, however, Sets will return in a future WIP (Windows Insider Program) flight. Thanks again for your feedback.

Which means MS is having major problems duplicating the feature set currently available in Stardock’s Groupy, which works with Win7 and later.

Why does MS have so many problems catching up with Stardock’s technological advances? Beats me, but I’d bet in this case that MS feels obligated to handle more of the detailed foibles in the Office Ribbon, which is a cesspool of conflicting settings.

Stardock pioneered many of the features you’ve seen (slightly mangled) in Windows 10, including Fences for grouping desktop icons. Start10 remains one of the few Win10 Start menu replacements that’s still supported. Microsoft should’ve bought Stardock a decade ago. But then, I guess that isn’t the Microsoft Way.

Personally, more and more, I just use Chrome and the Google Suite and don’t worry about Timeline or Sets, or syncing with my phones or tablets.

Microsoft will catch up some day. Maybe.

Patch Alert: Here’s where we stand with the June patches

This month’s patches contained a few surprises and some significant bugs, but they were largely fixed around the end of June. The big problem: Despite Microsoft’s assurances, Windows 10 1803 isn’t ready for prime time.

Full article in Computerworld Woody on Windows.

So what, exactly, is the new KB 4315567 “Compatibility update for upgrading to Windows 10 version 1803”?

The KB article says basically nothing:

This update makes improvements to ease the upgrade experience to Windows 10 Version 1803.

Supposedly it’s for Win10 1803 Enterprise. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense — a KB for Win10 1803 Enterprise that makes it easier to upgrade to Win10 1803 Enterprise? Pshaw.

The update isn’t available from the Catalog.

We’ve had “compatibility updates” in the past, including KB 2952664 and KB 2976978, but they just increased telemetry in Win7 and 8.1, respectively. Unless you wanted to upgrade your Win7 or 8.1 system to Win10, they were useless. Worse than useless, because they increased Microsoft’s snooping.

Anybody know what’s going on?

Thx to Richard Hay, @WinObs.

In addition to the second cumulative update for 1803 this month, we have another Servicing Stack update

Susan’s post below talks about the KB 4284848 second June cumulative update for Win10 1803.

There’s also a “critical” Servicing Stack update for 1803, KB 4338853.

Patch lady – fourth Tuesday release for 1803

The fourth Tuesday of the month is “clean up” day.  When the odd non security update comes out.  Of course lately that fourth Tuesday schedule has been random third Thursday but I’ve posted about how Microsoft has thrown out patch scheduling totally out the window several times… let’s get back to today’s topic:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4284848

The 1803 update out today had several key fixes of interest to some in this venue:

1. SMBv1 fix – Addresses an issue where some users may receive an error when accessing files or running programs from a shared folder using the SMBv1 protocol. The error is “An invalid argument was supplied”.
2. RDP window fix – Addresses issues with the Remote Desktop client in which pop-up windows and drop-down menus don’t appear and right-clicking doesn’t work properly. These issues occur when using remote applications.

Mind you on that second one vendors were having you hack up and put in 1709 RDP files as a workaround to get RDP – especially windowing to work.

https://support.gotomyerp.com/portal/kb/articles/critical-advisory-applications-are-slow-after-windows-10-update-to-1803

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8ho71f/windows_10_1803_update_breaking_rds_application/

For corporate patchers a new bug has just come up on my radar, Intel nics and Vlans broken after 1803.  Checking to see if the June intel driver release fixes this.

New Win10 News app vs. Google News page – which do you prefer?

I don’t claim to be an expert at web page layouts, or news content curation, so I’ll just post these screenshots and let you decide.

First is the new Windows News app, which only runs on Windows 10.

Then there’s the Google News page, which also changed format recently:

Google News is available on any device that can get to the internet.

What do you think?