Are you having trouble with Win7 patch KB 2952664 and Norton Identity Safe?

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Can you reproduce this? From reader TB: Windows 7 update kb2952664 has been around in several versions for about two years now. The latest came to me
[See the full post at: Are you having trouble with Win7 patch KB 2952664 and Norton Identity Safe?]

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@TB

What version of IE are you using on your W7 machine?

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Looks like Microsoft is looking for a monopoly on malware removal – cutting off AVG, Norton, who’s next? Is this going the way of Cortana/BING/Edge? You won’t be able to use anything but Windows Defender or MS Security Essentials?

SOOOO glad I’ve been hiding the updates like KB2952664, Win Update Client patches, etc.

Come on Europe, do it again!

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Maybe this will inspire one of the antivirus products to come up with a way to flag certain Windows updates as potential malware!

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I have Norton Security, and although I don’t use the Identity Safe feature, I’m glad that you have published this contributor’s warning about the current version of patch 2952664 and Norton.

I don’t remember which patch it was, in the group of patches that I installed in the spring of last year, but one of them screwed up my Norton Security so badly that it wouldn’t even come on anymore. I had to uninstall Norton from my machine and reinstall it, re-do all my Norton Security settings, etc.
Took valuable time, exposed me for a period of time to the internet without my firewall/antivirus in place – really annoying.
I later read that it was a known problem with that Windows Update patch.

That’s when I started being really careful about Windows Update, and found Woody. 🙂

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@reader TB: You might want to have a look at this if you are using Norton AV. Looks like Symantec created a gaping security hole in computers (as in, can be trivially totally p0wn3d remotely), instead of making them more secure. https://twitter.com/taviso/status/725816306209951744

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Turnabout being fair play…

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May I suggest you go online to Norton with a chat and chat with their support people. They are quite helpful and can help you get thru the problem.

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An update for Windows 8.1 broke Avast a while ago and it was not Microsoft backing down, but rather Avast catching up. I am convinced that in this case it will be the same outcome, Symantec will issue an update at some stage for their product to start working again.
It is after all a Microsoft designed operating system and they make the rules. The alternative is not to update obviously and keep everything at a point in time when the OS and applications were in sync and this happens all the time in businesses for good reason or not. Doktornotor has a good point in this discussion.

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CH100 wrote, “An update for Windows 8.1 broke Avast a while ago and it was not Microsoft backing down, but rather Avast catching up. I am convinced that in this case it will be the same outcome, Symantec will issue an update at some stage for their product to start working again. It is after all a Microsoft designed operating system and they make the rules.”

Maybe it’s not always the other company’s fault —

When my Norton Security was screwed up by a Windows update last year, it was Microsoft that screwed up Symantec, as far as I remember.

This was Woody’s article about it:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2977466/microsoft-windows/windows-patch-ms15-084-kb-3076895-breaks-programs.html

“It had to happen sooner or later: Microsoft’s near-perfect string of high-quality patches took a hit this month…

…Symantec Security products — Application stops responding, monitoring status isn’t displayed, on-demand scans don’t run

…It took Microsoft more than two weeks to get it together, with many frustrating tech support fumbles along the way.”

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We should have a list somewhere of various updates we are questioning or avoiding. Also a list of known good updates for each month (and/or the last 2 months before that).

“Junk” (have no benefit to the user, aka telemetry)
“Win10 prep related updates”
“Thought to cause some people trouble”
“Microsoft released this update, but they don’t know what it does yet (no KB article)”
etc…

My junk/10 list:
KB3035583
KB3123862
KB3022345
KB3068708
KB3080149
KB3075249
KB3090045
KB3139929 (did the next month’s update include KB3146449?)

8.1 only:
KB2976978
KB3072318

7 only:
KB2952664
KB3021917
KB2977759
KB3081954

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I follow Woody’s guidance closely. KB 29252664 is an optional update and I don’t install them. I also hide them, and I just did that again. I’m on Windows 7 with Norton Security and I use the Vault on my computer with the Chrome browser. Several months ago, Firefox broke Norton’s vault and I switched to Chrome. The last time I looked at Norton’s website, it hinted they are working on a Firefox fix, but didn’t promise anything.

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I no longer have either Norton Identity Safe or Win7 installed to test this with, but I will say that based on my experience adding Firefox into the mix several years ago with that combination, problems were frequent even when Microsoft was acting in better faith with its Win7 updates. At that time, I felt the blame lay with Symantec which was slow to get Identity Safe updated after Windows and Firefox updated.

I know it’s a pain in the butt to make a change, especially if you are getting Norton free as I was then with Comcast, but I finally got fed up with the update hassles and switched to a combination of Webroot and Malwarebytes for security and LastPass for password management. Webroot also has a bundled password manager for free, but I never tried that one. LastPass is excellent and smooth sailing, as are Webroot and Malwarebytes.

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Maybe it’s not always the other company’s fault —

Very true. However, if Microsoft will not modify or retire the patch, what is left for the other company to do? Sue Microsoft maybe?
Sorry, I am not a fan of Symantec and you can probably read this between the lines in my post which I admit may have some bias in this matter.

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