Beware - Microsoft Releases Botched Windows Update

Patch Tuesday is something many people around the world expect eagerly every week and while this second day of the week usually brings important Windows OS updates and fixes sometimes something goes wrong

The Microsoft logo is displayed over the Microsoft booth at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Hilton Jan. 7, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Patch Tuesday is something many people around the world expect eagerly every week and while this second day of the week usually brings important Windows OS updates and fixes sometimes something goes wrong – like this Tuesday, December 9, 2014.

Judging from the response of millions of PC users and gamers around the world, including the tech company AMD, the released KB 3004394 Windows update prevents users from installing and successfully running recent AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers including the just released AMD Catalyst Omegadriver, which we reported on a few days ago.

Furthermore the patch blocks future Windows updates from installing and stops VirtualBox. The problem arises on systems running Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Fortunately Microsoft is aware of the problem but the only solution is the KB 3024777 update, which simply removes the problematic KB 3004394 patch. This also means that the problems that KB 3004394 solves will remain. To be more specific KB 3004394 is the December 2014 update of the Windows Root Certificate Program in Windows.

The update changes the Windows Root Certificate and makes it look for bad root certificates on a daily basis. Apparently the patch has a problem inside that simply makes it not work in the way it must. Fortunately for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 users, the patch does not affect machines running these operating systems.

Hmm, the saying “Don’t fix it if it works” has turned out to be true once again.

Republished with permission from HiTechReview. Read the original.