Four more botched Microsoft patches: KB 3000061, KB 2984972, KB 2949927, KB 2995388

[JMH]

Windows users are reporting significant problems with four more October Black Tuesday patches

Microsoft's Black Tuesday problems continue to pile up. Yesterday brought to light problems with KB 2952664, the seventh patch with that name, which fails to install on a large number of Windows 7 machines. Now there are reports of four more botched patches. It's too early to tell exactly what's causing the problems, but if you're having headaches, you aren't alone -- and there are solutions.

KB 3000061, my early choice for "most likely to splat," is a kernel mode driver update, MS 14-058. It's one of Microsoft's zero-day patches this month -- there are very limited but identified attacks in the wild that use this security hole. TechNet has a thread about failure to install on Server 2012 machines. Poster jcs916 describes a problem with installing KB 3000061 on a Windows 8.1 machine:

Four more botched Microsoft patches: KB 3000061, KB 2984972, KB 2949927, KB 2995388 | InfoWorld

 

[JMH]

Microsoft yanks botched patch KB 2949927, re-issues KB 2952664

Windows 7 upgrade compatibility patch gets a tweaked installer, while the SHA-2 hashing patch is summarily removed without explanation

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Microsoft has pulled a patch -- KB 2949927, a patch so important it rated its own Security Advisory -- and there's no official notification that the patch was yanked, no explanation as to why it's been pulled, and no instructions for removing (or keeping) the patch if it did somehow get installed.

Let's start with the less upsetting patch, KB 2952664. It was released to the Automatic Update chute on Oct. 14, this month's Black Tuesday. The ensuing uproar was so bad that by the next day I had already posted an article explaining how the patch failed to install on many Windows 7 machines, throwing off error 80242016.

Microsoft yanks botched patch KB 2949927, re-issues KB 2952664 | InfoWorld