I had an update that I put off for a week, since I was working from home. It wouldn’t let me put it off any longer yesterday, so I did the update after work.
This morning - Defender keeps dying after the computer is on a few minutes. I looked and found this:
I tried their apparent solution, but it did not fix the problem. Guess I will roll back the update…
And, you cannot uninstall that security update. Only some updates can be uninstalled. Great…
Ok - Microsoft JUST fixed the problem…
Instead of doing what was suggested in that article… If you go back to Windows updates and “check for updates.” There is a NEW Security Update that you CAN download (it was just released). Installing that and restarting the computer seems to fix it (you have to restart the computer to get Defender to reload - it would not reload for me by clicking the button to manually restart Defender)
Now, Defender and the Firewall won’t just stop working 2-5 minutes after you turn on your PC.
Man, I much prefer a Chromebook. But while working from home, I have no choice. I usually do not turn on my Windows laptop very often - maybe once every 4-6 weeks. So, update problems are usually fixed before I ever do the update. But now, I have to use it everyday due to work.
I wasted about 45 minutes messing with this…
Hmm, it hasn’t affected any of my machines, touch wood.
Lucky you.
It may not effect anyone else now, since there is a NEW security update that fixes this. I think it may only hit people who did an update yesterday.
No issues on our Windows 10 machines.
As long as you did not do an update in the last day or two, I think it did not affect you.
If you did, it was bad luck
I did the update on Wednesday morning, so Tuesday night US time.
Then you lucked out. The offending update came out: Released: 4/16/2020 4:53:09 AM
So, it was from yesterday
Here are some other news articles, but there is now a fix that are not mentioned in these articles. I think they were released before the fix, but Google only just now picked the news articles up… When I initially looked earlier this morning, only 1 news article came up on Google)
(The Tech Radar fix did not work for me - just check for new updates in the Windows Update section if you are affected)
I never had any issues either with this? In fact Ive never had any of the problems with each of the patch Tuesdays this year that claim to be reported. On any of my systems and systems I have dealt with. People seem to jump on certain reports and running with them like making them out to be a major problems than really is. Overall the OS is fine, any of the major platforms will have problems and they have its ok just as long as the company addresses and fixes it, not a big deal.
Well, It IS a problem if the update turns off your Windows firewall and Windows Defender completely. It was an update that was released yesterday. MS fixed it this morning. So, if you didn’t update it in that time period, you didn’t get the problem.
But every time I restarted my computer this morning, Windows Defender basically turned itself off after 2-5 minutes of the computer running. The built in firewall did the same. I tried a manual scan 1x of the times before Defender quit, and it got stuck around 4000 files scanned. But even without doing a scan - the entire Defender program just stopped.
I didn’t care if the manual scan didn’t work per se - but having it TOTALLY die was not good. Plus, one had to wonder WHY this was happening. I was hoping it was from the update and not for some other reason…
At least Microsoft fixed it in just over 24 hours. But, there have been several upgrades that have broken stuff in the last few months. Since I don’t use my Windows PC much, I escaped the other problems in the past. But, while I am having to work from home - I HAVE to use my Windows PC daily right now.
I deferred an update for as long as I could, from last week. And, it just so happened to also pickup that newer update from yesterday when I finally had to let the update go yesterday evening. IF it were up to me, I would have deferred that update until I am done working from home. I put it off because I knew I could not afford to have a problem that would screw up my working from home.
I wasted about 45 minutes on this during the morning… Prior to the fix.
The problem is, one website will run with it and the rest pick it up without doing any background checking and suddenly it is a “major” problem and millions of people sit there looking at it, wondering why they aren’t affected.
With such stories, I’d like to see what sort of percentage of people are affected, is there a certain software combination that is causing the problem etc.
The problem with last months optional update is a case in point. It didn’t cause me any problems on my home machine, but by the time I got to work, it was reported as a major catastrophe. As it was an optional update, I rejected it on our update server to start with, although it would probably not have affected any of the work PCs, as it only affected a small set of edge cases, as it turned out.
I think this is the real problem. When your installed base is in the billions, then any corner case can still represent thousands or more of machines and people. It’s never great when anyone is negatively affected, but expecting everything to be perfect is pretty much a pipe dream.
I will keep my 3 windows machine UN-plugged for a week, they are older machines and take a whine to get the proper updates anyway. I have my Mac to do things on the web.
Well, I AM glad I found the 1 news story originally. It was the only one that was on Google at the time this was happening to me. Without the story, I would not have known for sure what the problem was. (Other stories popped up an hour or so later on Google)
Plus, while you can uninstall some updates - you cannot uninstall ALL of them. I was about to try to uninstall BOTH of the two updates from the day before - before I found that news article.
But, I soon found out that Windows 10 was only going to allow me to uninstall 1 of them. The one that was the problem (thanks to the news article, I found out) could NOT be uninstalled. So, I am VERY grateful to find that original story to explain what was going on with my system.
I had work to do and people to call, and I did not have time to start dealing with the reason why my security programs were not working. The news article(s) helped explain my issue specifically, IF it had affected YOU, you would appreciate the news stories tell you exactly what the problem was.
I even had to sign a paper for work swearing that I had security software installed on my laptop before they would let me use it to work from home. So, this was a HUGE problem for me.
And honestly, no one here knows exactly how many people here were affected. Just because the others on this thread didn’t have a problem doesn’t mean it didn’t effect a large number of people. Basically, ANYONE who updated their system Thursday and used Defender would have been effected. How many people is that? Probably not huge, but maybe enough to be a significant issue for many.
I DO think it was a big deal. Microsoft is supposed to be testing this stuff before they send it out and jack with people’s functioning computers.
I didn’t choose to get that Thursday update. There was a mandatory update from a week or so before that I deferred. Windows told me I could not defer it any longer. I finally let it do that update. It also grabbed that one from Thursday as well, apparently.
When this is over, I will be glad to not have to worry about using a Windows PC so much at home. I much prefer chrome.
I use a little piece of freeware called Windows Update Blocker (WUB).
Review:
It’s a portable app, so there’s nothing to install. When you unzip it, you get a folder called Wub, which I move to the Program Files directory, I then open the folder, right-click on the .exe file and choose Pin To Start so I have a Start tile to open it. It works by disabling the Windows Update Service but has the advantage that the setting can be locked so that no other part of the OS can turn it back on.
Because it could be easy to forget that updates are turned off, I’ve added a refinement. I click Start then start typing “schedu” to find and start Task Scheduler. I then use Create Task to set up a new task: run when the user is logged on (with highest privileges), trigger is begin At log on, action is Start a program and Browse to Wub.exe, Conditions are all unchecked, Settings are left at defaults. That means every time I start the PC it pops up and shows me whether updates are blocked so I can’t forget. If I don’t want to change anything I just close it.
I have it on all my Windows 10 machines, and a site like
https://www.askwoody.com/ keeps me informed about the ups and downs of updates. When it looks like any disasters have been fixed, I’ll enable updates on one machine, and if that goes OK I’ll enable the rest. Then I’ll set them all back to blocked again until the next monthly cycle comes round.
Thanks for the infoi