Microsoft Patch Alert: April patches infested with bugs, but most are finally contained
People think I’m joking when I refer to bug fixing as Microsoft’s next billion-dollar business. I’m not. This month woefully demonstrated why patching Windows has become much bigger – and more critical – than developing new versions. Microsoft’s hell-bent move to bring out new versions of Windows twice a year “as a service” makes things worse, but quality control problems dog patches to every version of Windows. Except, arguably, Windows 8.1.
In April, we’ve seen a return to two massive cumulative updates per month for all supported versions of Windows 10. The second cumulative update, with luck, fixes the bugs in the first cumulative update. Windows 7 turned into a fiery pit when it was discovered in late March that every patch to Win7 (and Server 2008R2) pushed out this year enables the Total Meltdown bug. Fortunately, by April 23, we finally saw some stability return to the process.