I have long thought that the biggest threat to a Windows computer is not malware but MS Updates.

About a month ago I went through my three computers sorting out updates that had refused to install, in total there was well over thirty of them, two thirds on the same computer and nearly all relating to the NET Framework.
It took me seven hours altogether, much of that looking up solutions on the internet, and for the first time since the first update on my first PC there are no updates outstanding although each computer has several hidden that are not relevant for one reason or another.

My pet hate is that you keep getting notified about an update but when you go to install it you are informed that the relevant program is not installed!
Then why the ******* hell do you keep getting told you need it?

Actually in rare cases it can be therapeutic, I heard of a doctor who advised his patients with low blood pressure to buy a Windows computer.

  And OMG!  I could tell you a horror story about my troubleshooting nightmares with MS Tech Support on the .net Framework fiasco.  It's been haunting me for years and years, and MS STILL DOESN'T HAVE IT FIXED!!!  And of all the crazy things that MS had me do in order to get the problem solved, wasted hours, wasted days of trying to fix it, and the VERY LAST thing they had me do was to remove .net Framework updates from Windows Update after they were updated, because they had no idea on how to fix it.
  So every time there's a patch for .net framework, I let it update, reboot, let Windows Update tell me there is an update for it, then uncheck it from the Updater to force it not to look at that particualar update again.  MS had me jumping through hoops trying to get it fixed and then resorting to this to make it stop.  Simply sad..... 

@pilgrim/T-man - um...I think you made a lot more work for yourselves than you needed to.

[attach]

^What can I say? Your case is unique!

I've probably dealt with a few hundred issues with NET Framework over the years. And with one exception (where Windows was already borked to begin with) one or more of the above three worked the charm.

Like the old song says: YMMV.

^Thx. I'll use any excuse to put Milla up on a webpage.

She's from Kiev originally too. Makes me happy to see a 'local girl' do well.

Quote from: 40hz on April 21, 2013, 12:10 PM

@pilgrim/T-man - um...I think you made a lot more work for yourselves than you needed to.

Microsoft has tools available to deal with NET Framework installation problems.

It's a pity that none of them worked!

Quote from: pilgrim on April 21, 2013, 07:42 AM

I tried everything else I could think of over the years

I have had all 3 of those tools for a long time, plus the Windows Install Clean Up Utility, I also have all the redistributables from v1 to v4.
My comment which I have quoted again above can, I assure you, be taken literally.

I also came across, what is for me, a .net first the other day, I downloaded a program I wanted to have a look at and when I went to run it I was informed that it required .net 4.5!
Oh joy, there's another one.

  I tried those too, and they didn't work for me either.  All it did was cost me a lot of time and effort cleaning and re-installing the .net nightmare.  Like I said before, the only thing that works for me is to mark the .net update(s) as ignored after installing them.....

^    Exactly.  Thanks for posting this clarification.  A bad situation, but only if you got caught immediately.  The information is good to have, as it includes a link to a fix, however.

I didn't know Malwarebytes issues updates so frequently.

In the quoted page that you linked to (in the second paragraph), it states:

On April 15 at approximately 3 P.M. (PDT) Malwarebytes was updated, this update disabled thousands of computers within just a few minutes. Though the issue was caught in the initial few minutes of the release the damage had already been done.

...

Malwarebytes acted swiftly in working to disable the update and removing it from their servers. Unfortunately the damage had already been done. And they have apologised for their mistake, taking the blame.

Giampy, do you use Comodo Antivirus, and if so, how do you rate it?

I use it for one year but I have never dealt with real viruses, so I haven't sufficient data to judge the efficacy of Comodo Antivirus.

I can only say it sometimes reports false positives. However consider that I set heuristics sensitivity at the maximum and that some false positives are far better than an overlooked virus...
Therefore those few false positives are excusable and even well-accepted.

With regard to cohabitation of Comodo and my system (Windows XP) I report that Comodo sometimes causes slowing down (pauses) to certain operations. This is the bad of Comodo.
However the situation is bearable.

I think you have to take a more measured approach.  What I usually do is disable *automatic* updates.  Then, a week (or more) after update Tuesday and all of the furor has died down, I download and install the updates manually.  I just don't want to trust anyone to automatically do anything to my computer.  Because if it borks up, are they going to take responsibility for it?

I'll evaluate and decide whether to take the risks, and take the responsibility for my choices.  I've been bitten once about 15 years ago... and to a large extent, that was my fault, as I was hosting my own web site when code red came out and wasn't keeping up to date.  It hurt, but at least it was my fault.

In this case, it hurts... but it's nothing that I did.  And that's a hard pill to swallow, especially since it seems I'm now looking at several hours to restore his computer.  Thankfully, nothing is lost, but it's still a pain, and a drain.

Just about what I do. I have the updates set to notify me but don’t download or install automatically. I always take a good look at them when notified, but then I wait a week or more until I can get some decent feedback on any problems encountered. I usually search on the updates but I also look at Woody Leonard's DefCon column, Infoworld's Tech Watch pages, and ComputerWorld's update pages. They usually give a good read on the updates each month plus for the unscheduled updates. There are some I'll probably never install, though most eventually make it onto my machine.

Jim

Quote from: x16wda on April 26, 2013, 12:53 AM

Quote from: Giampy on April 25, 2013, 04:23 PM

some false positives are far better than an overlooked virus...

Tell that to a couple of my customers after AVG decided that the lower filter for the Xen disk subsystem was a virus.  No problem there until their boxes were rebooted, which resulted in a nice 7B bsod.  (Fortunately for the second customer I remembered tracking down the issue for the first...)

When an antivirus reports a virus, any user should always verify if that is true or not (false positive) before deleting any files.
This should be taught to new users.

That's a presumptive statement. Most AV's default to automatically "cleaning" high risk files... which means deleting them. "New users" wouldn’t yet know to configure it any differently.

Jim

I was always under the impression that the default action of most consumer grade AV programs was "Ask what to do" or "quarantine."

i wasn't aware of any AV that had a default delete setting for anything right out of the box because of possible legal and liability concerns.

Well I know that in my first (and last!) experience with Kaspersky it automatically deleted a number of programs it determined to be "high risk" based on its heuristics. I kept Kaspersky around for about three months of the one year subscription I had purchased. It was way to strict and not configurable enough for me. It most definitely did not quarantine the program files.

Jim