Categories: PCSecurityWorkspace

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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Thomas Brewster

Tom Brewster is TechWeek Europe's Security Correspondent. He has also been named BT Information Security Journalist of the Year in 2012 and 2013.

View Comments

  • I just uninstalled the patch and I immediately received a notice in the tray to install the same patch from Microsoft.

  • Thanks for posting this info. So it was MSFT that killed my Kaspersky without notice. I had to reinstall the software.

    Wonder if it is worth staying with Windows with so many problems.

    My HP printer is having a lot of problems since the Kaspersky down days about a week ago and my music files have become corrupted as well.

    Hopefully MSFT users find a way to connect and start a class action suit against it for negligence and/or willful damage to others. There should be consequences for such actions of those who get paid by their service users.

  • I was wondering what was going on. Problems with Kaspersky just occurred recently and I was stumped. Ironic finding this article.

  • You might want to get all the facts when making a sensationalist blog post Tom Brewster.

    The bugged patch is Win 7 32bit only. 64 bit version of Win7 isn't affected.

  • I was experiencing untimely crashes with Windows 7, until I installed Google Chrome. I like the new experience!

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