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Microsoft Delays February Patch Tuesday Indefinitely (sans.edu) 88

UnderAttack writes: Microsoft today announced that it had to delay its February Patch Tuesday due to issues with a particular patch. This was also supposed to be the first Patch Tuesday using a new format, which led some to believe that even Microsoft had issues understanding how the new format is exactly going to work with no more simple bulletin summary and patches being released as large monolithic updates. Ars Technica notes the importance of this Patch Tuesday as "there's an in-the-wild zero-day flaw in SMB, Microsoft's file sharing protocol, that at the very least allows systems to be crashed." They also elaborate on the way Microsoft is "continuing to tune the way updates are delivered to Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2."
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Microsoft Delays February Patch Tuesday Indefinitely

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  • Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @05:04PM (#53868871) Journal

    I've never been a big fan of the way Microsoft rolls out updates, or how the system handles it, but since Windows 10 they've made it just a fucking agony, with annoying pop up screens, unintended system reboots (with loss of data), and just general chaos. How can a company that has been making software for over thirty years have suddenly become so stunningly incompetent.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Desler ( 1608317 )

      Maybe ask the Slashdot coders? They've been incompetent since 1997 so would have plenty of insight.

    • Re: Sigh (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @05:13PM (#53868945)

      They fired their qa team.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @05:14PM (#53868947) Journal

      Wait... what did you mean by "suddenly"?

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Up until the release of 10, they have been an excellent example of how to do updates. Individually installable, commonly individually uninstallable updates with excellent documentation on what each update does. Ease of both choosing how to install, when to install, and what not to install at all.

        That is all gone now.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe all the competent programmers have recently retired? That would explain a lot.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Guess who's one of the biggest H1B users in the US?

    • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @05:46PM (#53869123) Homepage

      Look at the CEOs over the various eras of Microsoft, it seriously explains everything. The current CEO is from their cloud devision, and in distributed computing, take a few nodes offline from time to time for patching is perfectly normal as other nodes are online for redundancy. Rolling updates are the norm in this area. This logic however absolutely FAILS on the desktop. Updates are scheduled to Microsoft's maintenance windows now, rather than when is the most opportune time for the consumer actively using the operating system. Now think of this not only in terms of Windows Update, but Microsoft as a whole. Gates was a business man, all of their primary software focused on productivity within a business environment. Ballmer was all about DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS, and as much as we all love to make fun of him for it, he was indeed quite good to them (Visual Studio had decent advancements during his time). Now we have Nadella, who's entire focus has been on automation, regardless of who all it effects. Again, this worked great in the datacenter, but he's entirely missed the mark when it comes to the end user perspective.

      • Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday February 15, 2017 @07:28AM (#53872375)

        Your description is apt, but the salient insight is that a desktop is being treated like a node in a cluster -- in other words, you can take a few down without taking the entire cluster of consumers being taken offline.

        This means that the purpose of the cluster isn't your individual productivity, the purpose of the cluster is your value as a consumer intelligence node. Just as in a clustered environment the specific workload of a physical server isn't important provided there are other nodes running to handle the cluster workload.

          The OS isn't about providing for your productivity, the OS is to provide Microsoft with consumer intelligence.

    • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @06:03PM (#53869259) Journal

      They fired their QA guys, most of them gone about 2 years ago IIRC. You started seeing a dramatic decline in product quality thereafter. Did you know it's impossible to patch a fresh Win7 install via normal Windows Update? That broke less than a year after they dumped the QA teams.

      • Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)

        by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @07:05PM (#53869643) Homepage Journal

        Did you know it's impossible to patch a fresh Win7 install via normal Windows Update?

        Yes. Luckily it's easy to download the updates manually at another computer.

        Ha! I lied, it isn't.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Actually it is easy. Google "WSUS Offline".

          • Tried it. Perhaps there's something else I can Google for that actually works rather than putting up a cryptic message and exiting?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          yes, it is.

          http://download.wsusoffline.ne... [wsusoffline.net]

          only the actual security updates (and optional things like mse, runtimes, etc), no bullshit.

          • Some of these great cumulative patches break things like Bluetooth.... Not a big deal for work, but definitely a problem for personal use.
      • by antdude ( 79039 )

        It's not just MS. Many companies. Companies need to know QA is important, but they care not. :(

        • The diagnostic information, if any, is never informative. My Android phone was attempting to connect to my home network over and over again with absolutely zero information. All the devices and software I deal with are like that.
    • ...How can a company that has been making software for over thirty years have suddenly become so stunningly incompetent....

      Microsoft only seems to care about the desktop as a means of personal data collection.

    • They were always incompetent. The factor here is money, as long as people only bitch about Windows and keep buying it nothing will change. You think Microsoft makes bad product? Then stop buying it!
      • $ talks but we already knew that
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        People are bitching and I think that is exactly what caused the pull back in the latest, unknown compulsory software install. They were probably going for another big control over the user power grab and chickened out, forcing the compulsory software install to be redone. These are not patches, not bug fixes, they are literally compulsory software installs and the user is not informed of the contents not can they refuse, master to slave, obey. Likely they were pushing further into George Orwell 1984 territo

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @07:19PM (#53869695)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Ramze ( 640788 )

      Frankly, they got tired of being blamed for botnets caused by users not updating Windows, so now everyone gets updates whether they like it or not, and they get 'em within a reasonable time frame of their release.

      I'm not sayin' it's right, but I understand their reasoning... and botnets on windows have gone down (they've mostly shifted to routers and other IoT devices).

      Windows still has tools to set when updates should be installed -- it's just that no one bothers to do it. Just like no one bothered to kee

  • Oh...Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by surfdaddy ( 930829 ) on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @05:23PM (#53868987)

    You've always been there throughout my tech career, for some entertainment. I loved that shell that was Windows 3.1 I gloated over Windows ME. I was Tickled when the first Zune "Welcome to the social! effort to chase the iPod came along. I was amused when you laughed at the iPhone and then belatedly came out with Windows Phone, only to crash in the marketplace. Of course there was Longhorn which became Vista. And don't forget Metro and Windows 8! People bought media and counted on Plays for Sure---- but it no longer plays.... and then there was that unlimited OneDrive storage that less than a year later users were "abusing"(haha) and it was rescinded! You gave your word and then changed it! Top it off with the devious Windows 10 "FREE!!!!" upgrade that was tricked upon people including my mother of 83 years old... and then the advertising and the advertising ID in the OS followed...so now your UPDATES DON"T WORK? Microsoft, don't ever change your character, it is entertainment that will last forever...

    • People bought media and counted on Plays for Sure

      As soon as it came out people started calling it "Fails For Sure", and whaddya know, they were right. It lasted, what, 3 years?

      Microsoft is the Shit Show that never stops and never fails to disappoint.

      • & this is why bill gates is, after 25 years, the so-called richest man on the planet.
        • & this is why bill gates is, after 25 years, the so-called richest man on the planet.

          The group Kiss was one of the biggest selling bands on the planet for a while....and they still sucked monkey balls. Having huge sales isn't always an indicator of quality.

    • I was amused when you laughed at the iPhone and then belatedly came out with Windows Phone, only to crash in the marketplace.

      Although I agree with most of what you said you do realize that M$ had a Mobile OS which was used successfully on phones & PDA's a nearly decade before Apple brought out the IPhone.

      • Yes but it kind of sucked as it looked like "little Windows". The iPhone was a revolutionary new paradigm.

    • by WallyL ( 4154209 )

      The gift that keeps on giving!

  • What else is new? Considering the "great" track record that Microsoft has it's exactly what they can be hesitant about.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    As in "I will gladly patch you Tuesday for a Zero Day Today"

  • Microsoft: "We couldn't figure out how to pour the piss out of this boot even with the instructions written on the heel!"

  • Before they could have dropped the single patch causing the issue.

    The price *you* pay for MS to desperately force you to take their spyware in Windows.

  • Good timing, I guess? I was literally just about to build a Software Update Group in Config Manager for deployment of this month's updates. I will still check for available updates though. :)

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