Newsletter Archives

• Initial impressions of Patch Tuesday, March 2020

  Posted on March 10, 2020 at 12:15 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  We have 113 new patches in the Microsoft Update Catalog.

  There’s a new Servicing Stack Update for Win10 version 1903 and 1909, KB 4541338. There’s also a new one for Win10 1809 and 1803, and for Win8.1.

  Dustin Childs’s report is up on the ZDI site:

  • 115 separately identified security holes (CVEs)
  • None of them are “Publicly known” or “Exploited.”

  CVE-2020-0852 is his top pick for a notable security hole. It’s a bug in Word that can be triggered if you preview a Word document in Outlook. The offered patches are for Office 2019 Click-to-Run, Mac Office 2016, Office Online Server, and Sharepoint Server 2019. Microsoft categorizes it as “Exploitation less likely.”

  Martin Brinkmann has his usual detailed, thorough analysis of the patches on ghacks.net.

  Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged the bugs in the “optional, non-security, C/D Week” patch for Win10 1903 and 1909, released late last month. No idea if this latest drop fixes any of the multitude of problems with KB 4535996. There’s also no mention I can find of the disappearing icon/temporary profile bug that’s been with us for the past month. But there is a humongous list of fixes to 1903 and 1909.

  Notably, the change lists for both Win10 1903 and 1909 are the same.

  No indication that Win10 version 2004 will ship today. I was half-way expecting it.

  UPDATE: Two hours later and I’m not seeing any major cries of pain. Stay tuned.

  Windows Patches/Security CVE-2020-0852, KB 4535996, KB 4541338, March 2020 Black Tuesday

• No, Microsoft hasn’t issued a “Windows 10 update warning”

  Posted on March 8, 2020 at 09:32 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Fool me once, shame on you. This time the shame’s on me.

  I click through on clickbaity things from time to time, and I decided to see if the breathless report from one of the major online publications had picked up something that slipped under my radar.

  Nope. I need to rap my own knuckles here.

  Here’s the fact. The “optional,  non-security, C/D Week” patch for Win10 version 1903 and 1909, KB 4535996, has a bunch of problems. Mayank Parmar first wrote about them on March 5 in Windows Latest. Lawrence Abrams repeated that list and added a few more the next day in BleepingComputer.

  We’re seeing a handful of common installation bugs:

  • The patch won’t install, or rolls back
  • There are blue screens or black screens after installation
  • Complaints of slowness from various sources

  We’re also seeing one novel problem, first reported (to the best of my knowledge) by Rafael Rivera. The tool used by Visual Studio to self-sign code, signtool.exe, triggers “Failed to sign” errors after installing the update:

  If you’re having trouble with signtool.exe, check if you have KB4535996 (optional 2020-02 CU) installed. Looks like WTLogConfigCiScriptEvent got removed from wldp.dll without sufficient testing.

  Microsoft has listened to Rivera (for a change!) and a Visual Studio community post from a Microsoft engineer now says:

  We’re aware of issues with signtool.exe after installing the latest optional update for Windows 10, version 1903 or Windows 10, version 1909 (KB4535996). If you are encountering issues or receiving errors related to signtool.exe, you can uninstall the optional update KB4535996. We are working on a resolution and estimate a solution will be available in mid-March.

  Of course, neither the Knowledge Base article nor the official Windows Release Information page say squat.

  I haven’t talked much about these bugs here because I rarely talk about bugs in beta software — and, make no mistake, the monthly “optional, non-security, C/D Week” patches are beta versions. Maybe even alpha, depending on your definitions. The changes in those patches graduate to full, living, breathing cumulative updates on the following Patch Tuesday.

  Neither Susan nor I ever, ever, ever recommend that you install the monthly optional updates. There’s too much downside, and almost no upside. This is a case in point.

  This month, though, things are a little different. With nearly all of Microsoft’s employees now working from home, it isn’t clear if all the known bugs (much less the unknown ones!) will get fixed in time for Tuesday. But I’ll have more about that tomorrow in Computerworld.

  Windows Patches/Security February 2020 Black Tuesday, KB 4535996

• Late February optional update, KB 4535996, released for Windows 10 1903 and 1909

  Posted on February 27, 2020 at 19:10 CST by joep517 • Comment in the Forums

  The latest cumulative non-security update for the latest Windows 10 releases. See [url=https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4535996/windows-10-update-kb4535996]February 27, 2020—KB4535996 (OS Builds 18362.693 and 18363.693)[/url] for a long list of changes and fixes.

  Windows 10, Windows Patches/Security February 2020 Black Tuesday, KB 4535996