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I largely agree with your skepticism . . . 🙂

But I will say that our initial testing for rolling out Windows 10 ENT from a golden master image (said image includes large design applications pre-installed) onto high end workstations with SSD main drives via fast Ethernet or USB 3.0 is taking 4 to 7 minutes total once we boot into the imaging boot utility.

Now creating that golden image took a bit longer . . .  [grin]

~ Group "Weekend" ~

I may preemptively roll back the KB’s before they cause problems.  Part of me wants to be part of the solution finding virtual team, but I don’t want to risk my production servers.

 

My current test bed contains only Server 2016 and some Win10 Pro workstations . . . (learning it’s ways and means) and so far that has not shown a blip of problems related to patching since it was deployed in November 2016.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

Well . . . this makes me feel a bit nervous . . .

We typically wait about two weeks to install server side patches.  It’s saved me no end of grief over the years. These patches were just installed across our entire system a week ago or so.  The KB’s mentioned look to be from March 2017.

So far I’ve not had any of the described problems – and we run a similar mix of server versions.   I worry seeing this that there may be a memory or resource leak in the patched code that will trigger after a certain level of load, or a time-frame.  If that’s true then we should start to see this problem in the next few days.

I’m also wondering if the problem outlined in the OP is a factor of certain drivers/devices and the March patches for servers.  One thing we saw, and blocked, was those odd INTEL patches that Woody warned about (Thanks for that Woody!).  Is there any chance that those, or other recently released driver patches from Microsoft,  combined with the March cumulative and security updates, caused the servers to go AWOL?

~ Group "Weekend" ~

samak wrote:

True, but to which one? Gmail, so Google can hoover up even more of my data? Is there any provider that can be trusted out there?

I use Gmail as my public profile account, another one as a throw-away account . . . but for my real email address I use a paid hosting service with advanced spam/virus protection on their side.  It’s not cheap: costs around 130/year.  There are less expensive options too, (Hotmail’s paid plans) and much more expensive methods (own your own email server.)

Remember:  if you’re not paying for a product, you ARE the product.

Oh, and a comment on something I saw earlier:

“b” said:

b wrote:

Outlook.com does that, not the Mail app.

This is quite true, and is true for most of the current free email providers.  They do most of the junk email sorting at the server side.  If you own and use Outlook, it also does some of this sorting, but much of the junk email that’s not deleted outright before you see it is moved before you download it.  The built in Windows Mail app has almost NO protections of any kind.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

My anecdotal experience installing pre-downloaded updates to be deployed outside of the automatic updates method: (YMMV)

For major service packs and cumulative updates:  always reboot before proceeding with further locally installed updates.

For pretty much all other updates I have had amazingly good luck in deferring reboots until they are all installed.  Once in a while the next update in a string of updates I attempt will complain that there are un-applied updates – then I reboot.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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HiFlyer

Most likely normal.  I tried to reply before with linked citations to Microsoft Answers, but the forum flagged my post as spam.  Sigh.

It’s a result of something being quarantined . . . run a full system scan with at least two passive scanners.  I tried to post more helpful stuff, but again it was flagged as spam.

 

Grrrrr . . . .

~ Group "Weekend" ~

That is most likely normal:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/mse-protect_updating/system-restore-point-after-update/785118c3-8961-42b3-815f-cba0956f3679

It’s created in response to Windows Defender placing something under quarantine.  That something might be malware, it could also be a false positive. In either case I strongly recommend running a full system scan for malware with at least two products.  use your current product first, then download and run (in scan mode only, not active protection mode) another AV product like <span class=”st”>Malwarebytes: https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/ .
</span>

Be sure to set Malwarebytes to NOT provide active protection – doing so will cause serious performance and stability issues on your system as two AV products attempt to scan every file you open simultaneously.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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dgreen, Noel Carboni

That site is working for me via port 443 just fine at the moment of writing.  Pings fail, and that’s likely by design.

Nothing at all unusual about that result.  Many security locked websites no longer respond to pings.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

There’s a glitch in the matrix . . . getting a severe case of Deja Vu – something (mumble) something about August 2016.

 

 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

Scotty, I need more power!  🙂

~ Group "Weekend" ~

4 users thanked author for this post.

BobbyB, Elly, Noel Carboni, AlanH

We blocked and rolled back the bad update KB3178690 on our WSUS servers a few days ago.  Any workstations that had picked that up successfully removed it by Wednesday.  Last night we allowed the replacement KB3191855 across the board.  It succeeded (and in most cases a reboot was NOT required on Windows 7 or 10.)

So “supercede” status or not, the old one is not a pre-req for the new version of this Excel 2010 patch.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

I’ve been really surprised that none of the articles I’ve seen this week on the issue has identified the real reasons that big money got behind this new law:

It’s not just about selective advertising (although that’s certainly one benefit to the ISP’s).

It’s about digital red lining.  It’s about selling your personal data to banks: loan originators, financial data brokers; it will become part of your risk profile. No, not the one you personally can see when you pull your “credit report” from the big three.  The other one, we called it a One Sheet when I was in the business.  You can’t pull that for yourself.  And your bank is forbidden by contract from sharing it directly with you in full when you apply for a mortgage.  You would be amazed and dismayed by what’s on that report.

It’s also about surveillance . . . but if I talk about that I’ll be accused of wearing a tin foil hat.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

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Elly

dave1977nj wrote:

March, 2017 Preview of Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB4012218) This update killed my updates for Windows 7. I have a Kaby Lake Processor and now I can not get anymore windows updates. Please see my screenshots attached. Is there any work around for this? Thank you

Would you be willing to post a screen of your recent updates list?  I need at least this most recent batch that your system installed, and the last month or two also if possible.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

My son is on spring break this week.  He finished his morning chores and wanted to play on his XBox today . . .   and it’s refusing to log his account in.  Once we forced the console offline, it allowed him into his local saved account.  Odd that it did not revert to allow that like the PC would/does.

My customers are reporting very mixed results.  Some of them on Office 365 Business are having issues logging into the web facing versions of their stuff:  Word online, Onedrive, Outlook etc.  But it’s not consistent at all.

My customers on Office 365 E plans seem to be doing fine . . .

EDIT:

More info for those interested.

First:  all our family accounts just started working again in the last few minutes.

Admin login to Office 365 for Business and Outlook accounts on portal.office.com show massive red X status outages for OneDrive, Outlook.

Admin login to the same for Enterprise plans show NO outages, and they seem to be working fine.  OneDrive for business is good, email is good, etc. Green check marks down the entire row (except for low level problems with Team – ongoing since March 15.)

I learned something today that I had suspected before.  The E plans are on a different server farm entirely – including (apparently) authentication.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

My grandfather came over by slow boat, hated New York and moved west to stake a claim.

In my slow cooker today is a corned beef roast.  Cabbage going in 30 minutes before dinner.  Soda bread is rising on the counter.  No green beer though.  🙂

~ Group "Weekend" ~