Patch Tuesday update: Disappearing SMBv3 patch, non-security Office patches, and a so-far-mild Patch Tuesday

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Things look pretty stable at this point, although I’m seeing a disturbing number of Error  0x800f0900 on installs. If any of the old problems poked th
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abbodi86

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as said earlier today, iTunes could not find any of my device backups in its user folder anymore. In the end it led to some crashes of iTunes-support processes. Uninstalling and re-installing didn’t solve the problem unfortunately. Also, Windows seems to have lost its complete index after the update. Restoring an image now, and trying to figure out what went wrong. Hours of work ahead I am afraid

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rontpxz81, Elly, woody

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I saw that report just after I submitted the article to Computerworld.

Echoing geekdom’s earlier inquiry:

Which update did you apply?

What is your operating system?

Were there any other errors?

Were there any error messages?

… and … did you see any changes to your desktop?

 

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Elly

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woody wrote:

I’m seeing a disturbing number of Error  0x800f0900 on installs
…
Error 0x800f0900 seems particularly prolific on Reddit

Disturbing? Prolific? ONE user, who got the same error code last month, is all I can see there.

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Remember, there are those who have access to larger reporting databases, resources, and wide-reaching information from multiple sources. What we see here is a cross-sampling, a microcosm.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
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Who are those? Woody said particularly prolific on reddit.

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From a quick search:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/fglajc/win_10_update_failure/

https://windows101tricks.com/windows-update-failed-to-install/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/difficulty-installing-latest-cumulative-update/658d5389-ce98-42c1-90e3-d1c3a82a2aa0

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/2020-03-cumulative-update-for-windows-10-version/37b0c6b8-4642-43e5-ac4c-ce6fccf0bdae

There are many others.

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rontpxz81, Elly

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woody wrote:

From a quick search:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/fglajc/win_10_update_failure/?ref=share&ref_source=embed&utm_content=body&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_name=47fee80215de42dba7b8870b9b1f787e&utm_source=embedly&utm_term=fglajc

Not the same error code you specified twice.

woody wrote:

https://windows101tricks.com/windows-update-failed-to-install/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/difficulty-installing-latest-cumulative-update/658d5389-ce98-42c1-90e3-d1c3a82a2aa0

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/2020-03-cumulative-update-for-windows-10-version/37b0c6b8-4642-43e5-ac4c-ce6fccf0bdae

There are many others.

Not the same error codes, and not on reddit where you said it was “particularly prolific”.

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In an installed base of ~one billion, how many are “a few”?  How many are “several”.  This is just from my own sense of numbers and proportion, but anything “major” in such a large installed base has to number in the millions to garner any real credibility, particularly when restoring a recent drive image eliminates any update problem.

I checked your links, as well as major news outlets.  A few problems reach the tech-y sites, but don’t make the news.  I don’t see any since of scale, just scattered reports in very small (relative) numbers.  Frankly I see as many if not more questions on these forums about confusion on how to pause updates, which updates to pause, what happens when the pause times out, etc.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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mledman

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Ok, dug into it for a couple of hours knowing that I had a very recent system image at hand. My first suspect was iTunes itself, which behaved weird. I uninstalled it, re-installed it, dit some nasty things to shake things up a bit, all to no avail. In the end, I got some rather disturbing USB-hardware errors, so I made things worse. Since I didn’t want to spent an eternity on repairing iTunes, I put the mentioned image back. Before implementing the most recent Windows updates again, I started iTunes. Again troubles. So these aren’t a result of the update, obviously. I then remembered that last week an update for iTunes was installed, so guess there is the culprit. Actually found a possible solution after a lot of googling around. Don’t have time to continue experimenting, since today I live in a country with a partial lockdown because of COVID. And thus will have to babysit instead of work more regularly.

The weird re-indexing-problem is something I don’t know the origins of though. It started almost immediately after installing the updates the first time. This time, it did not happen (yet?).

 

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mledman, rontpxz81

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Yep. Here’s confirmation that MS has been messing with the Server 2012R2 patches, from the Reddit sysadmin forum:

Is anyone else seeing two slightly different updates for KB4541509 (2012R2)?

Edit : Looks like this morning the old one was expired and there is only one remaining with an update date of 03/09 504.1MB in size.

Intros9

Seeing it here as well in WSUS, shows one set of files from 3/5/2020 and another set of files from 3/6/2020. Going to test install the latter on a couple of systems and see what happens.

Edit: installed the patch with 3/6 files on one test system and it still shows the other KB4541509 is applicable… D: Holding off to tomorrow to see if one of these gets expired.

Edit2: Just did another WSUS synchronization and the older of the two patches has been expired. Problem solved?

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Why do you call it messing?

they just accidentally pushed two versions of the rollup (installing them both will not cause an issue)
then they expired the older one

innocent mistake

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Adobe has released an update for Flash Player 32 and AIR 32. There don’t appear to be any security fixes.

“In today’s scheduled release, we’ve updated Flash Player with important bug fixes.”

On my system I now have Flash version 32.0.0.344

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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SueW

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did you get a chance to read about this recent blog from Born, woody?

https://borncity.com/win/2020/03/12/windows-patchday-issues-march-2020/

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woody

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So the disappearing icon/temporary profile bug is still there.

Perhaps I should call it an incompatibility — but we still don’t know what’s triggering the incompatibility.

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Elly

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Not sure if it’s mentioned before, but March Security Only Update for Win 7 and 8.1 contain the DiagTrack service component (AKA Unified Telemetry Client)

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T, Elly, woody, tbsky, PKCano

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1903/1909 just got 2nd security cumulative update

March 12, 2020 – KB4551762 (OS Builds 18362.720 and 18363.720)

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rontpxz81, woody, PKCano, geekdom

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… and it’s a regular, security, cumulative update.

Whew.

Now the big question… how long before “normal” people need to install it?

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[magic]

Anyone seeing problems with KB4541505 or KB4541509 on Windows 8.1?

Reports from a colleagues other half of PCs failing to boot after attempting to install. Can’t be rolled back, cleaned up etc – requires a re-image.

Currently building a test machine to find out …

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by magic.

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woody

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Keep us posted.

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Quick update …

Built a fresh physical machine (ThinkPad L460) via our corporate SCCM image, updated it to February 2020 then March 2020 successfully.  Perhaps hardware or installed software specific?

Patches were downloaded 2300GMT on Tuesday night by SCCM.

A quick google turned this up for a similar issue : https://serverfault.com/questions/1006694/determine-the-root-cause-of-windows-update-rendering-pcs-unbootable

I wasn’t able to reproduce it.

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@magic – In your serverfault link the comment by A J Wilson “…problem is related to update installation process…” made me wonder if folks are aware there’s a new Servicing Stack Update for Win 8.1

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Windows 10 version 1809 — KB4538461 (OS Build 17763.1098) I’m seeing someone having failures to get as far as past post and into black screen and only after 3 retries only getting into BIOS mode. So every time the person starts it only makes it into BIOS mode and the user has to manually select the drive/partition to boot into Windows. But maybe this is a very isolated issue.

I’ve got a pre March 2020 updates 1809 system image backup handy but am currently keeping that laptop offline for a few more days awaiting more reports. So I’ll be waiting 1 or 2 more days before maybe going online and getting the update applied.

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To answer “magic’s” question above I have successfully installed the Stack Servicing (SSU) KB4540725, Security Only (SO) KB4541505 and IE KB4540671 updates,  in that order, Group B style, on 2 separate PCs. (I wasn’t sure if the SSU should have been 1st or last, but it worked on the 1st PC so I repeated the same sequence on the 2nd PC.)

On the 1st PC it did take a long time (I didn’t time it, but I’d guess between 10 and 15 minutes) on the “searching for updates …” stage even though I had doubled clicked on the update .msu file for both the SO and IE updates, but it found the update eventually and installed.

On the 2nd PC, in light of the long “searching …” delay, as an experiment after the SSU installation I went into “services” (ran services.msc) and “stop”-ped the Windows Update service. Then on double clicking the SO update .msu file (which would have started the Windows Update “manual” service), the “searching for updates” ended almost immediately and the installation completed. After PC restart (I always do SO and IE updates separately with the SO restart in between, even though it may not strictly speaking be necessary – keep it simple is my motto) I again “stop”-ped the Windows Update service before double clicking the IE .msu file and again the “searching for updates …” stage was no more than a couple of seconds and the update installed successfully.

I don’t know if this “stop the Windows Update service before double clicking on the downloaded update .msu file” is a known trick to speed things up, but I will remember to do it next time.

I have had no problems in the day and a half since these updates.

HTH. Garbo.

 

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anonymous wrote:

I don’t know if this “stop the Windows Update service before double clicking on the downloaded update .msu file” is a known trick to speed things up, but I will remember to do it next time.

It’s been a “known trick” since several years ago when we had the terrible slowdown of the search, on both Win7 and 8.1, when you click “search for updates” in WU.

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