Patch Tuesday Update Causing Infinite Reboot Loop on Windows 7

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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You have to hand it to Microsoft, they are truly consistent. Another month, another round of patches and another round of botched fixes that cause more trouble than the problems the patches were meant to fix.

After installation the PC reboots, but during the boot up configuration of the patch it fails and Windows starts reverting the configuration and reboots. And then it starts all over again a couple of times until it eventually boot into Windows.
 
I'm a computer consultant... Ive now dealt with this (3) times since yesterday. Gotta say, it worried the crap out of me the first couple times. And on an older, slower PC the process can take twenty minutes.
/s Which is maybe good, since I bill by the hour. Heh, thanks Microsoft! /s
 
No issues on 8.1 or WHS 2011 (based on 2008 R2). Truth is of all the times they've had patch issues, I've only had one that affected me, though I must admit that a month or so back I didn't install patches for a week and they probably withdrew the patches by then.
 
Maybe Microsoft has just figured out another way to push people to migrate to Windows 10.
 
that's why I never install any Windows Updates until at least 2 weeks after they are released...
 
I had issues with the update below as well causing reboot loops... Issue was I had a multiboot setup and I had to unplug my main boot drive (which was not my windows boot drive) and then install the update.

Security Update for Windows (KB3033929)

Installation date: ‎3/‎14/‎2015 9:04 AM

Installation status: Successful

Update type: Important

Fix for KB3033929

More information:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=3033929

Help and Support:
http://support.microsoft.com
 
Interesting how patching has gotten more unstable on Windows. Been dealing with a lot of weird issues in xUbuntu 15.04 alpha patching cycle (they just switched over to systemd last week) but nothing that would take down whole systems like the stray patch in Windows has done several times in the last year.
 
[HIJACK]

systemd is great, don't know what all that bitching was about... ;)

[/HIJACK]
 
That one installed fine for me. Is anyone who is not dualbooting to Linux having the issue?
 
I was wondering why one of my teachers was complaining about her computer taking over a hour to boot. This might of happen to her. She let it do it's thing and it finally came up. Good thing I wasn't scheduled at the school that day. :p

But out of 700 computers I that was the only one that I heard that kind of complaint. Some others would just take awhile after logging in with ad, which isn't usual with a windows update.
 
[HIJACK]

systemd is great, don't know what all that bitching was about... ;)

[/HIJACK]

brace-yourself-systemd.jpg
 
Microsoft is no different from Apple. IoS 8.2 keeps trying to download itself again and again and again and never completes.
 
I have 31 updates available and am in no rush to install any of them.
 
Interesting how patching has gotten more unstable on Windows. Been dealing with a lot of weird issues in xUbuntu 15.04 alpha patching cycle (they just switched over to systemd last week) but nothing that would take down whole systems like the stray patch in Windows has done several times in the last year.

I don't recall them having many pulled patches until last year. They rarely affect me, but I do wonder what's changed. Maybe they're rushing things to beat Google's exploit release policy. Either I missed all the recalls in the past, or something has changed.
 
I don't recall them having many pulled patches until last year. They rarely affect me, but I do wonder what's changed. Maybe they're rushing things to beat Google's exploit release policy. Either I missed all the recalls in the past, or something has changed.

There was literally one recalled patch nearly every month of last year.

Quick google search shows advisories in August, December, October, April, January (this year), twice in November, A recall for a replacement of the recalled patch in August, September...

Yeah. It's been pretty messy.
 
There was literally one recalled patch nearly every month of last year.

Quick google search shows advisories in August, December, October, April, January (this year), twice in November, A recall for a replacement of the recalled patch in August, September...

Yeah. It's been pretty messy.

That's why I wonder wonder what changed. That said, this last patch cycle was huge (almost 300 MB, as I recall), so I feel fortunate that more didn't go wrong.
 
Oh great. And I have a system load coming this week.

Kah-RAP!
 
After installation the PC reboots, but during the boot up configuration of the patch it fails and Windows starts reverting the configuration and reboots. And then it starts all over again a couple of times until it eventually boot into Windows.

Infinite Reboot Loop

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This patch was installed on three windows 7 machines and not a single issue observed.
 
manage about 50 workstations and about ten servers. All the "affected" Win7 and 2008R2. None have experienced anything like this.

Reading the actual article. It seems to affect "only" linux dual-boot machines using grub. Nor is the loop "infinite" as Inigo Montoya helpfully pointed out.
 
Interesting how patching has gotten more unstable on Windows. Been dealing with a lot of weird issues in xUbuntu 15.04 alpha patching cycle (they just switched over to systemd last week) but nothing that would take down whole systems like the stray patch in Windows has done several times in the last year.
Back in the Windows 2k/XP days for a number of years I refused to do Windows Updates because my personal experiences with Microsoft's updates were mostly negative.
 
Microsoft is no different from Apple. IoS 8.2 keeps trying to download itself again and again and again and never completes.

Reboot loop and download failing are two different scale things you know.
 
The article says infinite reboot loop and then later that the machine eventually boots after a few tries. So which one is it, infinite or not?
 
that's why I never install any Windows Updates until at least 2 weeks after they are released...

same, not really just limited to Windows Updates, even on other platforms, we usually hold on to any updates for about 2 weeks as well. Unless it is a critical security update that would really have a big effect on our company.
 
same, not really just limited to Windows Updates, even on other platforms, we usually hold on to any updates for about 2 weeks as well. Unless it is a critical security update that would really have a big effect on our company.

I don't get why companies would deploy patches on patch tuesday. I have never worked anywhere where they did.

The only thing I can come up with is smaller companies that just use the built in MS patching/scheduling instead of WSUS etc.

Chances are what ever critical security flaw it is patching is months old (if not years lol) anyways, whats a couple of weeks. I suppose the flaw has more visibility now that it is officially "patched" but not enough to risk the work environment.

Pretty much every place I have worked, waited a week or 2, then deployed to a test group, wait a week or 2 and then deploy enterprise wide.
 
At home, I don't really do anything I care about on just Windows. All of the same functions are totally do-able on my cute Linux Minty netbook which I use a lot more than my bigger Windows laptop anyhow (which so getting Mint at the end of the year once I don't need MS Office for school stuff). At work, there's some poor wage-slave tech people that will fix my computer for me if a patch messes it up so I don't get worried about that.
 
manage about 50 workstations and about ten servers. All the "affected" Win7 and 2008R2. None have experienced anything like this.

Reading the actual article. It seems to affect "only" linux dual-boot machines using grub. Nor is the loop "infinite" as Inigo Montoya helpfully pointed out.

Yep, extremely minor subset of users using 3rd party boot loaders. Not nearly as widespread as the original article makes it out to be. Nor does the article even mention the whole 3rd party boot loader relationship.

The bug is worth knowing about if you are a tech working with dual booting machines, but hardly worth a headline and the fix is likely going to be needed from outside of Microsoft.
 
Go figure - I thought I had some kind of hardware issue as this has been happening to me on an 8.1 system.
 
This patch was installed on three windows 7 machines and not a single issue observed.

I only have one machine that uses Windows 7, but I've installed all updates the Tuesday they came out without issues.

This latest one took a little time to install though.
 
Pretty sure that this isn't just related to just this round of patches.

I have seen probably 100-200 computers over the years that this has happened to on Windows 7.

A lot of the time, the fix is to install a few patches at a time until you find the one that is causing this type of failure.. and then install that one last.

It was happening to a whole bunch of computers where I work for a few months and the fix was always the same. It was a few patches out of a huge number of patches that was causing it.

The other possible fix is to clear out the windows update cache and then let it look for updates again. Seems like sometimes patches get corrupted when downloading and the only way to fix it is to clear out the windows update cache.
 
I don't get why companies would deploy patches on patch tuesday. I have never worked anywhere where they did.

The only thing I can come up with is smaller companies that just use the built in MS patching/scheduling instead of WSUS etc.

Chances are what ever critical security flaw it is patching is months old (if not years lol) anyways, whats a couple of weeks. I suppose the flaw has more visibility now that it is officially "patched" but not enough to risk the work environment.

Pretty much every place I have worked, waited a week or 2, then deployed to a test group, wait a week or 2 and then deploy enterprise wide.

I guess because once it's announced, malware writers immediately try to exploit the issue. I always patch within a few days (if not on Tuesday). I can always back out patches, but that's just for me, not an entire company (though I did the same at work too).
 
I only have 1 windows 7 PC left and it updated just fine.

Just an FYI this is if the patch FAILS which can happen to any patch, windows will reboot until it can revert the failed write-over and then you login just fine.
 
Funny, the last round of patches actually fixed a problem I was having. Never saw the reboot loop.
 
Does this apply to critical updates or optional updates? I've downloaded the security (critical ones) without an issue.
 
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