September 27th, 2007

Microsoft Stealth Update and Windows XP repair don't mix

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 12:15 am

Categories: In the news, Microsoft

Tags: Microsoft Windows Update, Microsoft Windows XP, Update, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Operating Systems, Software, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Remember that Stealth Update I talked about a couple of weeks ago?  The one that Microsoft sent down the pipes to XP and Vista users and installed it irrespective of whether the user had given consent for updates to be installed?  Remember too how the apologists claimed that there was nothing wrong with how Microsoft had behaved because there was no harm done?  Well, it turns out that this update isn’t as benign as we first thought and can indeed cause problems for Windows XP users if they try to repair their installation.

Full image gallery available here

Information uncovered by Scott Dunn of WindowSecrets.com indicated that a bug in this update prevented users from being able to download and install patches on XP systems that have been repaired:

However, after running the repair option from an XP CD-ROM, Automatic Updates defaults to “on,” and the new 7.0.600.381 executables are automatically downloaded and installed. These new executables fail to register themselves with the operating system, preventing Windows Update from working as intended. This, in turn, prevents Microsoft’s 80 latest updates from being installed.

Testing

I was lucky enough to get early access to this information, and regular readers by now must know that over at the PC Doc HQ we don’t take anything for granted - so we set up a few systems to see if we could replicate this issue.

We approached this issue in much the same way that we approached the initial claims of a stealth update - with a healthy level or skepticism.  Because of this we set up several test rigs (with varying hardware configurations) onto which we installed Windows XP.  We then bought the OSes up to date with regard to patches and then booted up the systems off the Windows XP CD and carried out a system repair. 

After carrying out the repair we rebooted the systems and tried to update the OSes so that they was up once again to date with patches.  In all cases we were shocked to find that we couldn’t update the systems.  Windows Update informed us that it needed to update itself, and once that was done allowed us to continue as far as downloading the updates, but, and here’s the but, when it came to installing them, all 80 updates slated for installation failed with no indication as to why and with no offer of a remedy to the problem.  Trying to re-download the updates meets the same conclusion.

In case you’re wondering, we also waited to see if Windows Update would fix itself if left to run in the background automatically based on a schedule.  We waited, and waited, and waited, but nothing happened.  Without a doubt, Windows Update is totally broken.

What to do if you are affected –>

Pages: 1 2