Botched Microsoft Windows 7 Security Update Kills Computers

Microsoft has called on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 users to uninstall a security patch, after it emerged certain PCs were failing to restart following updates.

Some found their applications were not loading or working properly following an update for the Windows file system kernel-mode driver, which was included in this week’s Patch Tuesday.

Windows 7 patch blunder

One effect could be that Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7 would display a message claiming its license was invalid, Microsoft said. That would kill protection offered by Kaspersky, making the situation more serious than just a comical screw-up.

And Microsoft will now have to work on a fresh patch for the relevant flaw, which could still be exploited by hackers.

Microsoft said the problem lay in how the update interacted with third-party gear.

“We’ve determined that the update, when paired with certain third-party software, can cause system errors. As a precaution, we stopped pushing 2823324 as an update when we began investigating the error reports and have since removed it from the download centre,” the Microsoft Security Response Center wrote in a blog post.

“Contrary to some reports, the system errors do not result in any data loss nor affect all Windows customers.”

Other fixes from this week’s Patch Tuesday, including a critical one affecting all supported versions of Internet Explorer, are still available and users have been advised to download them.

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