Lessons learned from Microsoft's botched KB 2859537 patch

[Midknyte]

http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft...7-patch-228123

The easiest ones were bugs in games (Rift, Defiance) that somehow hooked into the Windows kernel. The game developers produced a fix shortly after the problem appeared -- and apparently they've learned it isn't nice to hook straight into the kernel. Imagine that.

The second set of problems cropped up when Windows tried to execute certain 32-bit programs on some machines. As I explained in August, the programs triggered an Error 0xc0000005. One Answers forum poster said, "it's not possible to run almost all applications include IE, Personalize screen, components from control panel and many other 'native windows features and applications."

The KB 2859537 article now says, "This problem can occur when the system has an instrumented version of 'ntoskrnl.exe' installed. We do not support this scenario."

As Bradley explains, "That's a polite way of saying, 'You're running pirated Windows code.'"

The most perplexing, elusive problem with KB 2859537 triggered a STOP 0x6B blue screen. The KB article talks through a complex scenario, but the problem seems to boil down to missing Registry keys -- or as Bradley says, "by some Registry corruption that already existed in Windows." Three specific keys are identified in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SideBySide\Winners node: two for x64 systems, one for x86 systems. If any of those keys are missing when the patch is installed, all hell breaks loose. "Be aware that the corruption would have existed before the security update was installed. The corruption is not caused by the security update."

I can only think of three ways those keys could be missing. Perhaps you were running through your Registry and decided to delete a few keys. Maybe you installed a rogue program that somehow managed to clobber the keys. Or maybe -- just maybe -- you ran a Registry cleaner that decided the keys weren't worth keeping. Kerplop.

[Train]

That turned into a can of worm,

No matter whom you blame for the incidents, there's no question that Microsoft could've done a better job of preventing them, in some cases -- and that some third-party system level software can have far-reaching, deleterious consequences.

You really don't want to clean your Registry that badly, do you?

We hve been saying 'DON"T" for years too.

[Midknyte]

Yup. Registry cleaners can wreck your system. Just say no.

[HAN]

And yet, literally millions run them all the time. Ahhh... the power of marketing!