Windows 7 Users Who Installed January Update Report Network Issues; Some Say the Update Has Also Incorrectly Flagged Their OS License as 'Not Genuine' (itpro.co.uk) 131
Some Windows 7 admins are feeling the pain of Microsoft's latest updates in this week's Patch Tuesday releases. From a report: Users who've installed this Tuesday's KB4480970 cumulative January update have been complaining of network connectivity issues on those devices based on a network that uses the SMBv2 file sharing protocol. Microsoft released its update to fix several identified vulnerabilities, including a remote execution flaw in PowerShell and to add robustness against side-channel attacks like those targeting the Meltdown and Spectre flaws. But a number of users immediately complained of networking issues, with Microsoft confirming there are now three known problems with the January patch. The other issues comprise an authentication error, and a file-sharing issue affecting some user accounts. ZDNet adds: Regarding the 'Not Genuine' Windows 7 error, Microsoft confirms that "some users are reporting the KMS Activation error, 'Not Genuine', 0xc004f200 on Windows 7 devices". "We are aware of this incident and are presently investigating it. We will provide an update when available," writes Microsoft on both KB4480960 and KB4480970.
Just patches? (Score:5, Interesting)
These "patches"are getting to be almost as complex as the feature updates. Why would security updates be changing so much? Even mitigating a complex attack shouldn't require a registry hack to fix broken functionality.
Looks like Home and Pro users are guinea pigs for more than just the semi annual updates now. How did this even make it out of testing?
Re:Just patches? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think MS just does not care anymore about ordinary users. Sure, they are incompetent and their products never were good, but what is recently happening with win7 and win10 is way beyond that.
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Lack of QA. MS got rid of their QA dept. :(
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Ah, yes. I remember. Must be one of the most stupid (or disrespectful to the customer) acts in the software industry a major player has ever done.
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I let it upgrade to Windows 10 to see how that looked.
So Linux it is. Using Mint Cinnamon and don't care what happens in the MS world anymore.
Patches are major for Windows security. Minutes (Score:2)
> I was able to roll back the updates and even disabled future updates, but that poses security issues.
Major security issues. If you're not being targeted by the NSA, the vast majority of attacks on Windows machines are taking advantage of known issues that have been addressed via updates. So lacking the updates makes a big difference to security. The "mean time to compromise", how quickly an internet-connected machine is hacked, is under 10 minutes for an unpatched Windows machine.
That's with NO user (Score:3)
> Maybe for non-power users. Who let every JS ad script run by default and open every email attachment without a care.
Careless users are a problem, a mostly separate problem. No it is needed. The MTC figure I mentioned is for an unpatched Windows machine simply connected to the internet, with no user doing anything.
One thing stupid users can do is turn off automatic updates on Windows. Another stupid thing that stupid users can do is enable (or leave enabled) UPnP. Those two combine to virtually guarant
Patch Tuesday is once per month (Score:2)
> Manually check every Tuesday ... If you are incapable of remembering to perform one task a week, please give your computer to someone not quite as mentally disabled.
Patch Tuesday is second Tuesday of the month, not every Tuesday.
Once or twice a year they do one on a fourth Tuesday.
You were saying people who are too "mentally disabled" to know when to update Windows shouldn't touch computers? I assume you'll be unable to reply to this since you'll have to "give your computer to someone not quite as men
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Same here, I recently switched to Mint 19.1 with Cinnamon and I'm never going back.
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Windows is a complex tangled mess of code. A lot of it has to do with a lot of backwards compatibility. including backwards compatibility to things that they s
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Looks like Home and Pro users are guinea pigs for more than just the semi annual updates now. How did this even make it out of testing?
Microsoft is working towards continuous integration, with builds on every commit, and releases every week or so. That is what an engineer from the Windows team excitedly told me.
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Why would security updates be changing so much?
That depends entirely on the problem right? Does security suck because you left yourself open to a buffer overflow? Or maybe security sucks because your entire protocol or architecture was poorly thought out and you need to change something fundamental and important to fix it.
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Since your language implies you are absolutely certain you're the smart one, you should already know this.
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This is why update strategy was (Score:5, Insightful)
Turn off auto updates
Check for updates by hand
Only if the update was at least a week old update at a time of my choosing
Of course when I tried this on windows 10 check for updates is now check for the latest alpha updates and immediately apply them.
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I've had Windows 7 install updates without my permission using your strategy.
My new strategy is to go to Services
Select Windows Update
Right click and properties >> Disable
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The weird bit with that is that even when downloading updates manually from the catalog (as one does by hand), you still have to re-enable the service to install them. So the workflow is download updates -> turn off NIC -> enable service -> install updates -> reboot -> disable service -> enable NIC.
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In 21 days it will tell you "I'm restarting in 10 seconds" and then y9u are forced to install updates. Also congrats on having a Windows 10 machine that gets more than a week of uptime. You apparently don't play games or use any of the memleak filled browsers..
"Windows Genuine ADVANTAGE" (Score:1)
Deja vu all over again.
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DX12 is largely ignored by most gaming companies. Most used is DX11, with second most used being DX9.
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Some games have DX12 support, but most don't. And those that do have DX12 are new games, and new games aren't as good (just like Hollywood movies). The number of users who can tell the difference between a high quality DX11 and DX12 version of a game is not that large.
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You'd be surprised, but it seems that gamers tend to hold onto some pretty old stuff. I remember being surprised at how long it took before games finally started shipping on DVDs (instead of multiple CD sets). Heck, Steam only dropped Windows XP support this year. Yes, as in 2019.
I'd actually be surprised if they are many non-Microsoft owned games that don't target Windows 7.
Sadly, I doubt them ... (Score:2, Interesting)
At this point, it's difficult to distinguish Microsoft's own ineptness where they put out updates that break things, and actively trying to break those systems so people have to upgrade.
Unfortunately, after many years in the industry, I have learned with Microsoft to never attribute to incompetence what can be attributed to malice.
My cynical view here is that someone issued a directive to break Windows 7. I could be wrong, but I don't extend the goodwill to Microsoft to assume I am.
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Win98 SE was your idea of "stable?" I'm guessing you never tried to get more than 64 hours of uptime from it.
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64 hours was fine. The figure you're thinking about is 49 days.
A 64-hour limit would've been a major issue. A month and a half, however...well, 98 already had enough problems that already made it unlikely you'd ever run it for that long for *that* issue to be a problem.
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Which is probably why it took 5 years to notice the problem ...
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You're remembering wrong. I would still get blue screens every month or two with 98SE. The NT kernel is a lot more stable - even with all the junk getting piled in on top.
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Remote Desktop Dead (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Remote Desktop Dead (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually this got broken in win10 with KB4483234 also!!
instead of uninstalling the patches, you can fix it like this:
Run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Credentials Delegation -> Encryption Oracle Remediation
Change it to Enable and in Protection level, change back to Vulnerable.
enjoy! :) (and yes, as a sysadmin, I'm really tired of MS bs patching)
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Thanks for the tip! I haven't released the new updates to our enterprise environment yet due to the BS updates the past few months.
Actually this got broken in win10 with KB4483234 also!!
instead of uninstalling the patches, you can fix it like this:
Run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Credentials Delegation -> Encryption Oracle Remediation
Change it to Enable and in Protection level, change back to Vulnerable.
enjoy! :) (and yes, as a sysadmin, I'm really tired of MS bs patching)
Any fix for slow SMB? (Score:4, Interesting)
I copied a 2 GB file, and it took nearly threee weeks. It finally completed and the md5sum checked out, but that's ridiculous. I don't need to access our Windows file share often, but some of my coworkers do. It's driving them nuts.
Re:Any fix for slow SMB? (Score:5, Funny)
In addition, during this file transfer, Explorer will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even vi is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Windows installs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Win10 that has run faster than its Android counterpart, despite the Arm's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 2.5 Ghz Dual machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Win10 machine is a superior machine
Win addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Windows machine over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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"I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Windows machine over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems."
In no particular order, here are several intelligent reasons why I'm still running Windows
( Win 7 Ultimate, Updates and Patches disabled because they tend to break more than they fix )
Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16 Tablet - $2699 Win 10 only
The entire Adobe CC Suite - $650 / year Win / Mac only
Sibelius Ultimate - $900 perpetual license Win / Mac only
Cubase Pro - $550 perpetu
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I copied a 2 GB file, and it took nearly threee weeks. ... some of my coworkers do. It's driving them nuts.
That's like 2KB/sec, USR modem speed. Install WireShark somewhere (NOT on your production server) and see what the problem is -- something's busted. (like you don't know!)
Or check out Resilio Sync (was BitTorrent Sync.) It's a freemium product (think business use must pay, but you could set it up to see if it suffices) which will keep specific/all files synced up between users/servers. You can choose exactly which ones, and the users can also sync between themselves without the server.
Also libre Syn
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What did you do to break it? Undo that and you have you fix. There's no wide spread issue with SMB speed. Every consider your HDD in your NAS is shitting itself?
Isn't that standard in a lot of cases? (Score:2)
I know I've pulled a random relative's Windows 7 computer out and turned it on after a random amount of time, reinstalled the system with the key on the system, and got it flagged as not genuine.
I think Microsoft just wants you to call up their activation helpline in these edge cases, for a variety of small reasons. Not the least of which would be subtle pushes to want an upgrade on old systems.
But for systems you just want as a garage tool system, or something like a Plex or random file server a relative
Their activation helpline won't help you. (Score:2)
Ordered an SSD, downloaded the latest Win 7 Pro 64 image and created a bootable usb drive. Installation of hard and software went without any issues. Fortunately the new install would recognize the old drive. So I ran ProduKey which found the old key.
Activation would not work. I called the helpline (which is usual here in Germany for activating OEM Win
I hope they have fix by the time I boot up windows (Score:4, Funny)
Should happen sometime in the next six months.
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Same here. I'm running Win7 on 4 systems with updates off.
Been doing it for a few years. Typically, MS updates either decrease performance or break things (or give you an OS you don't want).
When I can't use Win7 anymore, it'll be Linux.
RDP fix for win7/8/10 (Score:1)
Actually RDP also broke in win10 with KB4483234 ... (as well as win7)
instead of uninstalling the patches, you can fix it like this:
Run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Credentials Delegation -> Encryption Oracle Remediation
Change it to Enable and in Protection
Deactivation Ability is National Security Risk (Score:2)
Additionally, this happened with the last update on my machine; is Microsoft testing rolling operating system blackouts?
Don't update (Score:2)
I stopped updating my old Win7 box when an update blasted me off the net and I had to recover with a System Restore point.
I recently went full time to Linux Mint and I plan on running Win7 in a VM for a few older Windows programs I still have to use.
Microsoft is, in my opinion, deliberately crashing older versions in order to force people onto Windows 10. That's just never going to happen on any of my computers, never never never.