October’s updates look promising; however …

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PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley First, a mea culpa: I said I was comfortable with installing the out-of-band Internet Explorer update released October 3.
[See the full post at: October’s updates look promising; however …]

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AJNorth, abbodi86, deanwmn, Fred

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[Fred]

Tracey Capen wrote:

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley First, a mea culpa: I said I was comfortable with installing the out-of-band Internet Explorer update released October 3.
[See the full post at: October’s updates look promising; however …]

Susan Bradley suggests in her article that updating the BIOS might have any influence in Windows patching successes. Is there anyone who has more info about this.
To my knowledge many many people just don’t know anything about this; and if they do most neglect to do this.
And so they will become a patching victim in the free testing business of Microsoft (“dogfood” “guineapig”  “cannonflesh”)

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• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Fred.

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Fred wrote:

Susan Bradley suggests in her article that updating the BIOS might have any influence in Windows patching successes. Is there anyone who has more info about this.

Well actually, it does look like the one Windows 10 Pro 1809 October update failure I’m currently working on, might really have been due to a firmware bug. Storage-related / NVMe, to be more specific.

Still running hardware and firmware diagnostics on that so not completely sure yet.

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Fred

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I’m now using Win Pro 1903 on 5 PCs:

1 1903 does not provide Defer upgrades check-box under  Settings > Update & security > Windows Update > Advanced Options and select the Defer upgrades check-box.

2 While available initially after 1903 update, 1903 deletes Feature and Quality defer options after short time period.

3 ONLY option in 1903 Advanced (update) options now is to delay
updates for up to 35 days.

4 “Windows Update” option does not appear in 1903 regedit…..

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

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There is a discussion of the changes in the deferral pulldowns in this thread, and probably elsewhere on the site around that time.
The GUI pulldown deferral settings are gone in v1903. There are Registry settings, and Group Policy settings if you have Pro, that may still be respected (for how much longer is a good question).

There is a big difference between the current Pause and those Deferral settings. With the current Pause, after the Pause period is up, you cannot use Pause again until you have installed the currently offered updates. If you Pause for 35 days (and don’t end the Pause earlier), you can end up being forced to install the next month’s updates shortly after they are released (untested by the hoi polloi) with whatever bugs they contain. Have caution using Pause.

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For Win 10 1903, is is possible to block MS updating — either deleting auto-update services such as Update Orchestrator and WAASMedic or deleting/disabling their associated scheduled tasks, plus turning Windows Update service to Manual start with all its scheduled tasks disabled?  This approach has proven good on earlier versions,  so that all updating is user-controlled, and done either by standalone installation of updates downloaded from the MS Update Catalog, or by selective update installations done with WU Mgr utility.   Hoping to continue that approach when a 1903/1909 update becomes necessary in December.

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Where do I find the Adobe patch 45-19?

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Adobe haven’t issued any security bulletins this month (yet):

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They have now, but 45-19 seems to be on your list from September.

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Kirsty

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I am seeing this on 1809 after the 2019-10 cu update.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/print-management-console-script-error/9a805013-dd8f-459a-91ed-0ce2c95974da

 

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which 2019-10 cu update for 1809, mister anonymous? KB4524148 or KB4519338

the problem could be fixed with the KB4519338 CU released Oct. 8

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mn– wrote:

Fred wrote:

Susan Bradley suggests in her article that updating the BIOS might have any influence in Windows patching successes. Is there anyone who has more info about this.

Well actually, it does look like the one Windows 10 Pro 1809 October update failure I’m currently working on, might really have been due to a firmware bug. Storage-related / NVMe, to be more specific.

Still running hardware and firmware diagnostics on that so not completely sure yet.

Wow, thanks! Keep (me) posted please. I tend to miss some once in a while…

If you succeed, it looks like folk need to BIOSpatch to cloack the crippled Micr0$0ft patches.

Or do we all have to buy new hardware?

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Shouldn’t the golden rule “if ain’t broke don´t fix it” being applied before considering a BIOS update?

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[mn--]

… but on the other hand, once it’s known to be broken… like a specific firmware version in a specific PC model? Or maybe it’s the NVMe SSD firmware… or could be driver issue.

Anything that causes on-disk storage inconsistency even in rare corner cases really should be considered to be broken. Still haven’t found a specific trigger though, but the SMART data from the NVMe device indicates there’s a problem *somewhere* … really a bother to debug, manufacturer naturally wants detailed logs for that kind of thing.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by mn--.

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… and a fresh firmware patch for that hardware model was released yesterday. Second this month already for this specific model.

So yeah. Not only Microsoft updates…

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Susan says “It’ll be best to put off that release for a few months, giving Microsoft time to shake out the bugs. To do so, you need to be on Windows 10 Pro, which lets you apply the needed blocks via the Local Group Policy Editor.”

I recently discovered, while chasing down a VPN problem, that it is actually possible to add/enable GPEDIT within Windows 10 Home edition. The details are found here:

http://woshub.com/group-policy-editor-gpedit-msc-for-windows-10-home/

Because I found the command line breaks in that article somewhat confusing and the statement about using them in a BAT file slightly inaccurate, the attached PDF shows what worked for me in the end. After executing the two commands, either through a command window or from a BAT file, a reboot is needed to complete the installation, but then RUN GPEDIT.MSC works too on the home edition. I did find that the options for delaying updates to be slightly different for Home edition as compared to Pro and those differences are shown in the remainder of the attached PDF. I’ve only just enabled them, so I have yet to see how successful they will be.

I should also say that before I found how to enable GPEDIT I also found this program that looks promising too:
https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus

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Pointless exercise from developers IMO, MSFT will just counter their findings further down the timeline due to the surveillance within W10. Home was intended NOT to have GPEdit, anyone who has issues with W10 Home after implementing stuff like this are only asking for trouble.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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satrow, PKCano

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a new batch of optional non-security updates including new preview rollups for Windows 7 & 8.1 have been released by MS this Tue. Oct. 15 (except for Win10 v1903 users)

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See article on the main blog: here.

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A couple things to report. In another thread someone mentioned a new Adobe vulnerability with Acrobat and Reader. I have no idea if they are pushing a patch to DC users but I had 2 people today report that their Adobe DC software opens and then they observe the “spinning wheel” for a bit while waiting for the program to become responsive.

I’m just mentioning this as an observation for now. Perhaps someone else can confirm.

 

I had approved kb4517389 the new October cumulative update for 1903 in WSUS for our test environment only. I installed it a day or two ago but haven’t printed much. I got a call this morning for a unresponsive printer and after checking the pc had installed kb4517389 even though that pc was not in the test group. Removing the patch did not fix the printer. I had to re-install the printer to get it to work. I’ve changed the setting in WSUS back to “not approved” hoping that I don’t see other systems installing this.

Red Ruffnsore

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Today night WSUS downloaded updated KB4519976 (SMQR) and KB4519972 (PMQR). Does anybody know what’s changed? Only metadata of binaries or what? Windows Catalog also contains updated files on 17.10.19.

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woody

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Looking at the Catalog, I see updates last night for both the October Monthly Rollup and the Preview of Monthly Rollup on Win7 and Server 2008R2

Taking a look at the binaries, everything inside is still dated Oct 7.

So my guess is that it’s another mysterious metadata change.

Thanks for the heads-up!

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Fred, columbia2011

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After the current update, i am no longer about to select my paper source for the hp laserjet2300n driver…is there any fix or suggestions from the community? i have to manually configure the printer to print from tray one… it seems as if the universal printer driver has been installed for this older model on 10/11/19

thank you paul

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You may just need to check that the printer has been setup under Settings > Devices > Printers and scanners. Then re-boot and check that the settings are still correct.

cheers, Paul

p.s. This really should have been a new topic.
p.p.s. If you need to post a screen shot, use Windows Snipping Tool to take the screen shot, save as PNG, then upload the PNG. It makes our lives much easier as we can read it without having to download anything.

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Fred

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