Microsoft Pulls Broken XP Update

Cally writes "Yahoo! reports that Microsoft have pulled a Windows XP update from the Windows Update servers after it killed network access for some users of the claimed 600,000 who installed it. (Does this mean only 600,000 XP users trust Windows Update?) The story hints that the problem was something to do with VPN or IPSec drivers clashing with Symantec software - however I haven't found anything about this on the Microsoft KnowledgeBase (the link Yahoo provide goes to the generic support home page.) Anyone got more info?"

Not News

[4of12]

In real life, people don't trust MS patches until they've tested them on their own systems with their own application mixes.

Until MS raises their quality assurance and testing to a higher level than it is now, knowledgeable system admins, responsible for managing lots of Windows systems in their environments, will continue not to trust Windows Update.

Re:Why is this news?

[arivanov]

Yes. Look at the "do not use" and missing kernel numbers on www.kernel.org and "Heads UP" announcements on bsd-current.

Personal Experience

[aaaurgh]

All I know is that, having decided to pull down some of the critical updates (not on auto, you understand) I can no longer get the properties window to appear for a directory in Explorer, except in safe mode. Kind of makes it difficult to administer security that does; oh and the performance went down a heap too. Even tried backing them all out too, but the system restore was disabled - too little disk space apparently, nice of it to tell me in time(!).

Only four hours ago, I was on the phone to MS support. If the p.c. is started with only MS services enabled (there's only Norton or MS ones on this machine) via the msconfig utility, everything is fine. If I disable all the non-MS services in the services window though and do a normal restart, everything is broken again - duh!

I'm going to try unloading/reloading all the Norton stuff again but don't hold out much hope. Oh well, looks like I'm up for another rebuild, the sixth in five months... and no, I won't be using the updates in future

Windows Update is buggy

[delfstrom]

Windows Update is flawed. I did a search the other week to find out more information on why some of our Windows 2000 workstations were suggesting old patches needed to be applied.

For example, I've downloaded, installed, and rebooted as required for the security update from Feb 13 for MSXML 4.0 and the bloody thing still keeps coming back!

Now I've got ones from April and later that keep returning like zombies to haunt me. You'd *think* that it would be simple... but noooo.

Re:Why is this news?

[mblase]

The second-to-last Mac OS X update had a glitch where, on many portables, it would reset the system clock to the epoch on restart. The update after that corrected the problem, of course.

This is somewhat minor compared to losing network access, but only somewhat. This sort of thing happens often when OS updates move from the lab to the real world, and the fact that Microsoft responded the way it did should be considered a virtue rather than a vice.

Re:Palladium Pre-Testing

[DShor]

In fact, there was an exploit in a previous version of MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) that was later patched, but someone could exploit patched users by pushing the unpatched MDAC from their web sites. If anyone had selected to always trust Microsoft for downloads, it would be downloaded and installed without ever notifying the user.

What Happened

[dr ttol]

This is related to threedegrees, a Microsoft software. I tracked it down 3 months ago and detailed the process on their message board that can be reached here:
http://www.threedegrees.com/MessageBoards/ShowPost .aspx?PostID=427 [threedegrees.com]

What is going on is that Symantec's AntiVirus software is clashing with Microsoft's attempt to update some critical files, and when only half of the files are updated and the other half is denied, the result is a broken machine.

The fault can't entirely be blamed on Microsoft in this case.

Re:Maybe MS should have tested the software first

[Anonymous Coward]

What was the liability when linux kernel version 2.4.12 or whatever it was that would nuke a partition if unmounted? None. And this was a stock kernel in the stable branch... oops.

Everyone fscks up, not just Microsoft!

Re:Hmmm....I wonder why...

[johndiii]

According to the article, "Because the software update was considered a security improvement and not an urgent repair, it was available only to customers who specifically visited the Windows Update site Friday. Other repairing patches can be delivered automatically to consumers." This one was not automatically installed.

Which is not to say that automatic update is not a potential source of major problems. QA needs to be really good for something like this, which it clearly was not.

Re:windows update

[Jondor]

off course, then again, netscape 4.7 was the last one to support for example roaming access using an LDAP server or mod_roaming under apache.. A very usefull feature for those who use many different machines.

You know, there ARE other reasons not to join the upgrade ratrace..

Time to think about Mac again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I was not the only one who got hosed downloading this update recommended to me by MS thru the update site. It ruined my DSL connection and could not be uninstalled. I wound up fdisking and formatting, which of course required the nice little phone call to Microsoft to get this number and that number. When they asked me why I was calling, I told them I downloaded an update from the update site that killed my internet connection - they were very polite after that.....wonder why? :)

When Apple comes out with their new PPC 970 systems I will be first in line to buy one. I dont like what I see coming down the Microsoft trail re DRM and all the spying going on. I liked my G4 when I had it but it was so slow compared to my windows box I sold it. Seems like Mac maight make a comeback, I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way. But there's no way I'm buying a G4 unit.

Antivirus software

[Cardbox]

According to the story the main (although not the only?) problem is with systems that have anti-virus software installed. I'm not surprised. Anti-virus software is written by people who don't fully understand MS's incomplete and incomprehensible documentation, who have often had to reverse-engineer something that MS might change at any moment... and the AV suppliers do not, themselves, bother to document the ways in which their product subtly buggers up a Windows system... so that we can't even tell whether a particular eccentric behaviour might be the fault of the AV.

Whenever a really mysterious bug in a Windows program appears, I always ask users to try running it on Windows (rather than Windows-as-modified-by-an-AV). More often than not, the bug goes away.

VPN or IPSec drivers clashing with Symantec soft

[Joe Enduser]

What software is secure that doesn't clash with Symantec Software?

When I tried to convert my couple of users to Spop3, we found out that Outlook et.al. could handle it fine, but the email plugin for Norton Antivirus couldn't.

The situation wasn't all that bad as it incited me to implement virusscanning on the server (F-Prot, not Symantec :)

The Enduser

Re:Time to think about Mac again?

[Xerithane]

Wow, that was a lame comeback. MS is being blamed for a complete disregard for quality control.

I have an XP box. I use it to play games, and for media, it works great. BF1942 crashes, but aside from that the machine never crashes. I use Windows Updater (that prompts me) constantly. I got the notice for this update, and skipped it for some reason. Glad I did.

In the last 6 months since I've had this machine, I have downloaded every update and installed them without any concern or issue. That is pretty good quality control right there. For me, this is the first time I've seen them muck up MS Update for XP, that's a really good track record.

Considering I've had Nvidia bugger their drivers all to hell more times than I can count (Upgrading to a new driver on a geforce2 go took up about 80% of the RAM when I started X, but if I rolled back it was unstable...)

Saying that Microsoft is being blamed for a complete disregard for quality control is just dumb. Yes, quality control needs work, but they do work hard for it. From a programmers perspective, there is always something wrong. I'm working out this bug right now that only hits sometimes, that segfaults at a certain point in the code with a really "can't access memory" code in the debugger (gdb) and Valgrind just segfaults.

This is just one, and I guarantee that there will be more. Bugs happen. You can't always expect every piece of software to work flawlessly.

I've had better luck with Windows Update than urpmi, up2date. The only Linux equivalent that works, in what I would say, better fashion that Windows Update is Gentoo's emerge.

Re:windows update

[mcrbids]

I know any number of people who just use the software that came on their Win98 CDROM, it never even occurs to them to update their software.

Ummmm, yeah!

People think of a computer like a machine. Like a car, or a boat.

Do you take your car in to have the Catalytic converter "upgraded" every year?

Do you subscribe to an "update service" to update the embedded firmware on the onboard computer?

Why would you do this? Why should they?