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Post by alpha128 on Feb 15, 2018 0:39:15 GMT
As noted by Woody Leonhard at Computerworld: My employer pushed out the February patches today and I installed them on my Windows 7 work computer. Everything seemed to go smoothly. On my home computer, I hid the KB 2952664 patch again. I'm not going to install any of the remaining patches until Woody gives the all clear signal. We are at MS-DEFCON 2: Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it.  |
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Post by mslo79 on Feb 15, 2018 10:52:52 GMT
That seems like a lot of effort to basically delay just about every single patch that comes out especially if they are okay for the vast majority of computers  so unless it's likely to cause major issues I would not worry much and just install it. while it will vary a bit from person to person... I only got burned on that 16299.192 update on Windows 10 for my 10 year old laptop not all that long ago but it's been fine once that played itself out as I never had any show stopper issues outside of that one with Windows in general (maybe a little thing once in a while but nothing that major). but I got to admit that was a pretty major one because it would not boot into Windows 10 with it applied and basically got stuck in a loop as it would remove it and boot back into Windows 10 and then not long after want to install it telling me to reboot only to fail again. thankfully I had backup images with CloneZilla (so I could revert it to a point prior to that build screwing things up etc) but most people in my situation would have been mostly screwed but then again how many people are still using computers that old(?). but my main computer never had any huge issues like that one. |
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Post by alpha128 on Feb 15, 2018 13:08:03 GMT
That seems like a lot of effort to basically delay just about every single patch that comes out especially if they are okay for the vast majority of computers so unless it's likely to cause major issues I would not worry much and just install it. I only got burned on that 16299.192 update on Windows 10 for my 10 year old laptop not all that long ago... but I got to admit that was a pretty major one because it would not boot into Windows 10 with it applied and basically got stuck in a loop... most people in my situation would have been mostly screwed... I remember, fondly even, when I would install Windows patches the day after they came out - and I never had any trouble. But these days, that's like playing Russian roulette. Microsoft fired their Q&A department while simultaneously increasing the number of supported Windows versions. Woody Leonhard recently quoted Paul Thurrott as saying: |
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Post by mslo79 on Feb 17, 2018 8:20:54 GMT
Yeah, I completely agree that they should focus more on quality and taking things slower as unless something is in need of a quick fix for security sake (like if something was being actively exploited to where plenty of people were being effected) they should be more concerned with thorough testing before releasing to the general public even if it takes another month to get stuff fixed properly when it comes to general security updates through Windows Update.
especially all of that Spectre/Meltdown drama with everyone (Microsoft/Intel etc) in a huge rush to get the fixes out even though there is no exploits in the wild so far apparently and probably won't be for a while. plus, it makes me wonder even if their was Spectre exploits in the wild that if they are not easy to exploit (like say if you need to actually get someone to run a shady piece of software for someone to exploit Spectre etc) then the damage would be kept to a minimum as I think it's mainly a problem if someone could get nailed from those by just visiting a website. but anyways...
that is a good point especially with Windows 10... because they got too many versions to support and are basically releasing two major version of it each year with new features etc as I think they should be more concerned at this point with reliability of their patches with minimal feature changes. like try to find that balance of stability/feature improvement, but more towards stability since it makes more sense to think like that for the sake of general system stability for the common user.
or the least they could do is cut things back to say one new version of Windows 10 a year (instead of two like it is now) as this way they could have more time to polish things. like spend about the same amount of time adding in new features etc, like they are now, but have a additional half year or so to polish things before it's released to the general public. seems like that would cut down on screw ups and be less stuff they have to support.
but it seems Microsoft is slow to react so they will probably continue to shaft people a while before catching the drift with what you said.
with all of that said... it's surprising with all of the $$$ Microsoft has it seems like it could hire people who know what they hell they are doing as even if it costs Microsoft more $$$ it will probably be worth it for them overall to avoid major screw ups that damage their reputation.
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Post by alpha128 on Feb 27, 2018 1:14:39 GMT
Update from Woody Leonhard today.
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 10, 2018 19:19:02 GMT
Woody raised the MS-DEFCON level to 3 on Monday. So earlier today I got caught up on my patches.
alpha128's update adventures
1. Launched Macrium Reflect and was told that I had to update to a new version. The auto-update failed so I downloaded the full installer, ReflectDLHF.exe
2. I then scanned ReflectDLHF.exe with Avast! and Avast! told me that it had to install a new version. So I did that.
3. After updating Avast! and rebooting. I did an Avast Smartscan ,which told me that my VLC media player was out of date. So I installed that.
4. I then finally installed the Macrium Reflect update and rebooted again after that. Then I did a complete backup of my C: drive.
5. I then installed 2018-02 Monthly Rollup for Windows 7 (KB4074598)
6. After a reboot I installed 2018-02 .NET Rollup (KB4076492)
7. Because the purpose of the Macrium Reflect update was to fix a problem with rescue media, I then created a new rescue disc.
Total elapsed time: about five hours
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Post by mslo79 on Mar 12, 2018 9:51:03 GMT
alpha128Personally I just use the default Windows Defender Anti-Virus along with something like RansomStopper (by CyberSight) for my general protection as Windows Defender is a decent enough anti-virus program, which I further like it because it tends not to interfere with stuff like other AV's might, and I use RansomStopper for general protection against ransomware. both are free and light on resources which is another reason they are solid and tend not to mess with you as RansonStopper is pretty much one of those things you install and forget as it does not need configuring like a lot of other security type of software does. This is much better than VLC Player... www.videohelp.com/software/PotPlayer (i.e. Pot Player x64) ; that's been my 'go to' video playback program on the PC as it's the little things that make it better than VLC and it's generally quicker to respond on stuff like rewind/fast forward etc. p.s. The KMPlayer is what that pretty much used to be but the original developer of The KMPlayer apparently sold it and moved over to Pot Player years ago now as I used to use The KMPlayer as my 'go to' thing until I discovered that the dev dumped it and made Pot Player. All the more reason to dump Macrium Reflect and switch to Clonezilla ( clonezilla.org/ ) you ain't really got to worry about random updates with that as it runs from bootable media (DVD or USB). seems more of a proper way to backup things since Windows is not running when it backs up your main boot drive. clonezilla.org/downloads.php ; lately I been using the newest test builds (which is pretty much currently "clonezilla-live-2.5.5-32-amd64.iso" (basically from March 6th 2018)) because it adds in support for 'zstd' compression under advance options which generally compresses better and does it quickly vs the default compression in the current stable build does and that does not have zstd compression. basically use the 'pzstd' compression (it's zstd but uses more cores on your CPU) since it will take advantage of more of your CPU cores and process things much quicker as if you just use zstd it uses one CPU core which will be slower. p.s. basically I just download the Clonezilla ISO file and use YUMI (i.e. www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ ) to create a multi-boot USB thumb drive as you can add Clonezilla (and different builds of it to at the samr time if you want) along with other useful stuff like your Windows 7 (or Windows 10) ISO and DBAN or Memtest etc ISO files and still use it for general storage to. you can use a bootable CD/DVD if you want to but USB is generally better nowadays since it's easier and does not waste discs. NOTE: I did find a small bug in YUMI, at least in relation to Clonezilla, though in that while it basically works fine Clonezilla will error if the file name of the ISO is too long. basically it will error during the initial startup of Clonezilla and won't even make it to the main menu. but if you keep the files named as they are (or not much different) you will be fine. basically I named the ISO of newest beta of clonezilla to "clonezilla-live-2.5.5-32-amd64 - Test 3-6-18.iso" and it works but if I take that same ISO and name it "clonezilla-live-2.5.5-32-amd64 - Mar 6th 2018 (BETA).iso" it(Clonezilla) will error on load up. it's basically a glitch in YUMI and nothing wrong with Clonezilla. basically if you don't want to screw with renaming stuff, you can use the file named as it's downloaded and that will work fine. I just rename builds that are not official stable releases to keep track of things is all.
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Post by alpha128 on Mar 12, 2018 13:25:26 GMT
mslo79Thanks for the recommendations. But I think I've done quite enough software updates and installs this month. 
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