Microsoft Pulls Security Update After Crash Reports

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One of the updates that was part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday release for April is interfering with some third-party software and causing some users to experience the dreaded “blue screen of death.” Microsoft is advising users to uninstall the security patch while it works on a replacement.

The Register’s John Leyden reported, “Windows 7 users should uninstall a security patch Microsoft issued on Tuesday because some PCs failed to restart after applying the update. The software giant advised users of Win 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2* to roll-back a patch within MS13-036, a security update that closed two vulnerabilities in the Windows file system kernel-mode driver…. The advice follows complaints that after applying the update computers would either fail to restart or applications would not load. Users who experienced problems were sometimes confronted by ‘fatal system error’ warnings on start up.”

KrebsonSecurity’s Brian Krebs noted, “The problems with the patch appear to be centered around Windows 7 and certain applications on Windows 7, such as Kaspersky Anti-Virus.”

CNET quoted Microsoft’s Dustin Childs who blogged, “We are aware that some of our customers may be experiencing difficulties after applying security update 2823324, which we provided in security bulletin MS13-036 on Tuesday, April 9. 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 center.”

Computerworld’s Jeremy Kirk added, “Contrary to some reports, the system errors do not cause data to be lost and also do not necessarily affect all computers that applied the patch, Childs wrote. Microsoft published instructions for how to uninstall the security update.”