Author Topic: Latest MS updates borks WinXP? (Read 22,165 times)

Darwin · « **on:** August 15, 2007, 09:55 PM »

Hi all,

I updated both my XP Pro Sp-2 and XP Home Sp-2 machines this morning and am having issues with both of them today. The Pro machine had to be restored to a pre-update image (thank you Acronis TrueImage! And thanks justice for prompting me to image my drive early this morning - right before the update!) because explorer.exe crashed fatally on each and every reboot and I could not get it to start in Safe Mode. My wife's notebook running Home won't wake out of Standby - explorer.exe doesn't crash but freezes and the computer is rendered unresponsive. After hard booting, the Active Desktop Recovery message appears on the desktop.

Lovely.

Anyone else having trouble, or is this just one of those random conincidences? FWIW the Home machine runs AVG 7 Pro and Ad-Aware 2007 Pro while the Pro machine runs SpySweeper with AntiVirus. Both are behind a hardware firewall and have the Windows firewall enabled.

Pissed in Courtenay... (sorry, potty mouthed because I've wasted almost an entire day on this issue).

tomos · « **Reply #1 on:** August 15, 2007, 10:06 PM »

no, luckily having no problems here after update + one reboot earleir today

Darwin · « **Reply #2 on:** August 15, 2007, 10:28 PM »

Well the plot thickens... I've reinstalled the updates and rebooted and all is well on the Pro machine. I disabled Active Desktop (which wasn't being used anyway?!) on the Home machine and it's fine, too. It is starting to look like a coincidence... But, I can't for the life of me think what I was doing prior to the reboot that would make explorer.exe go ballistic like that. Anyway, for now all seems well. I've been monitoring the web to see if anyone has anything to report but it's quiet...

I'll boot into safe mode via msconfig and run my anti-spyware/anti-virus just to be safe.

Thanks for responding, Tom!

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #3 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:10 AM »

No probs with the updates here either (XP Pro)

app103 · « **Reply #4 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:37 AM »

Out of curiosity, what kind of CPU is in the machines affected?

There was issues for some people with KB936357 being installed even though it wasn't intended for their specific CPU and it causing a bunch of problems.

If that is one of the updates you installed, you might want to take a look here: http://cranialsoup.blogspot.com/2007/07/kb936357-funky.html

And everyone else should too, because there is a serious problem with that update on some machines. It contains microcode for your system's BIOS and is meant only for certain CPU's. For those CPU's it is a necessary update, or you need to update your BIOS with something from your motherboard manufacturer instead.

But if your CPU is NOT on the list, do NOT let it install!

On some systems, it is misdetecting the CPU type and trying to install itself, with disastrous effects to either the computer or a router that may be attached to it.

PhilB66 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:43 AM »

I find updating/patching my XP Pro box a real annoyance. I experienced similar issues in a previous security update and system restore saved my a**. Now I do a backup first and install the updates manually.

Darwin · « **Reply #6 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:54 AM »

Hi App - thanks for the link (love your webpage's new (?) look). I have both computers set up for manual updates and haven't installed KB936357 on either of them. Mine (running Pro) is a first generation Centrino while my wife's is an 18 month old AMD Athlon 64+ - so neither of them are good candidates for the patch! I think I was chasing phantoms - apparently my wife's computer has been doing the Active Restore Recovery trick every couple of days for over a month! Her cousin has been here from Korea for the last 6 weeks and installed a number of dodgy add-ons to Internet Explorer and a Korean equivalent to CCleaner. I uninstalled everything, set up a user account for the cousin and reset the Active Desktop settings (as mentioned, it wasn't being used anyway) and all seems to be well, for now.

Regarding my notebook - I reinstalled all of the MS patches that I had installed earlier today and have no further problems. The only thing I can think ofthat might explain this is that I updated DiVX Suite (or whatever it's called) and accidentally allowed it to install the Google toolbar and Desktop Search (I was mindlessly clicking OK, forgetting that just about everything wants to install either Google or Yahoo toolbars - GRRRRR). I was informed that I had to reboot to finish the Google part of the installation, clicked "Cancel" and then uninstalled it via Your Uninstaller 2006. The Google uninstaller ran first and told me that it couldn't uninstall because of the reboot so I let Your Uninstaller rip it out... This is probably what screwed everything up. I'd forgotten about the Google angle until later on and came back here to update my tale...

PS I hear you Phil! I went the manual route about a year ago, around the time that automatic updates started pegging peoples' processors. I have no desire to go back, especially in light of the contents of app's blog!

Grorgy · « **Reply #7 on:** August 16, 2007, 05:29 AM »

I finally had enough of windows update, for whatever reasons it would keep crashing randomly, gone to windizupdate (http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/) and so far all is working fine, and now i dont have to go to IE for anything, what a pleasant change

Darwin · « **Reply #8 on:** August 16, 2007, 05:35 AM »

Thanks Grorgy. That looks very interesting.

Grorgy · « **Reply #9 on:** August 16, 2007, 06:05 AM »

It wont help if the update itself is the thing causing the problem, but it gets rid of MS errors, which seem abundant.

Eóin · « **Reply #10 on:** August 16, 2007, 11:40 AM »

Something seems to have well and truly messed up my XP x64 here at home and the only thing that changed was I installed all the updates

Eóin · « **Reply #11 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:32 PM »

Ok uninstalled three of the four newest updates (left the Media Player update because I thought it shouldn't have been the issue) and the computer back working perfectly.

I really should play around with the three updates to try and narrow down the offending one (if it is only one) but for the moment I'm feeling lazy

Darwin · « **Reply #12 on:** August 16, 2007, 01:41 PM »

Wow - glad everything is OK Eóin.

Eóin · « **Reply #13 on:** August 16, 2007, 03:31 PM »

Me too, the computer was just resetting every 10 - 15mins, that's a pretty serious issue.

Reading the three updates I'd hazard a guess that Microsoft Security Advisory (932596) is the culprit. It is possibly conflicting with Sandboxie. They've always said the x64 version was living on borrowed time.

Quote from: http://www.sandboxie.com/index.php?WindowsVista64

Windows Vista 64

Sandboxie cannot be installed on Windows Vista, x64 Editions for the following two reasons.
Driver Signing

With Windows Vista x64, Microsoft has introduced mandatory code signing for drivers. Since Sandboxie relies on a driver component to ensure software isolation, it cannot be loaded into Windows Vista x64 without compromising the integrity of the system.

Acquiring the code signature is not in itself an insurmountable task. However, the next reason will show why this is pointless at this time.

Kernel Patch Protection (PatchGuard)

In 64-bit editions of the Windows platform, Microsoft has extended the core of the operating system, the kernel, in such a way that it routinely performs self-checks to detect any tampering. This miracle of an extension is affectionately nicknamed PatchGuard.

The software isolation provided by Sandboxie is not something that the stock Windows kernel supports, and in order to implement this, Sandboxie must make some changes to the kernel. This is detected by PatchGuard as tampering, and so the system crashes soon after Sandboxie is installed.

Note that the PatchGuard used in earlier versions of Windows x64, specifically Windows XP 64-bit Edition, is less aggressive than the PatchGuard used in Windows Vista x64. For this reason, Sandboxie can and does work in earlier editions of Windows x64. For now.

Maybe it's nothing to do with it, I am only guessing, I'll follow their forums and see if anything turns up.

Darwin · « **Reply #14 on:** August 16, 2007, 03:46 PM »

Hmm... explorer.exe just crashed again, but recovered itself. It happened when I was navigating TrueLaunchBar links... I wonder if there is a connection to the problem I had yesterday? Over the last two days I've noticed the display of TLB gettings messed up and freezing for brief periods of time. Perhaps I should contact the developer. Well, at least post in the user forum. Right, off to do that now.

Dirhael · « **Reply #15 on:** August 16, 2007, 04:26 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 16, 2007, 03:46 PM

Hmm... explorer.exe just crashed again, but recovered itself. It happened when I was navigating TrueLaunchBar links... I wonder if there is a connection to the problem I had yesterday? Over the last two days I've noticed the display of TLB gettings messed up and freezing for brief periods of time. Perhaps I should contact the developer. Well, at least post in the user forum. Right, off to do that now.

I would try to disable DEP, if that's enabled on your system (which it should be by default, provided you have a relatively updated PC). To do this, open your C:\boot.ini (might be read-only, so right-click, properties and remove that checkmark) and add the following:

Code

/noexecute=alwaysoff

(it might already be set to /noexecute=optin, but if so just change it to alwaysoff instead)

DEP is a quite common reason for explorer.exe crashes, and is best left disabled. In theory it should provide you with some additional security, but in the real world it just doesn't work properly on the current Windows platform.

Darwin · « **Reply #16 on:** August 16, 2007, 04:36 PM »

Thnaks Dirhael. I've made the change (from optin) and will see how it goes. I *swear* I changed this setting years ago (maybe it was to optin?).

Dirhael · « **Reply #17 on:** August 16, 2007, 04:40 PM »

Quote from: Darwin on August 16, 2007, 04:36 PM

Thnaks Dirhael. I've made the change (from optin) and will see how it goes. I *swear* I changed this setting years ago (maybe it was to optin?).

I'm a fellow "TLB evangelist" and have had the same explorer.exe problems a few times in the past, and what solved it then was to disable DEP...so I'm hoping it will do the same for you to

If not, try checking your event log. It should be able to at least give you a clue as to what's going on.

Darwin · « **Reply #18 on:** August 16, 2007, 04:53 PM »

Just found this at the TLB support forums as well. The poster has described my problem better than I did - I *was* accessing the TLB context menu via right click and attempting to sort by name. I'm going to try to help the developer track this bug down as the OP over there hasn't responded.

vmcclintock · « **Reply #19 on:** August 16, 2007, 05:03 PM »

Borked? So much nicer than "hosed" and all the really bad words I've been saying this morning. Fortunately, I don't allow Windows to update or install automatically, but then I'm not technically savvy enough to determine the possible repercussions of the various updates. So, I let the update run and install on both of my puters this morning...one a laptop running XP Pro, a newish thinkpad. That one is fine so far, with no problems. But my desktop running XP home is all screwed up...So far I have isolated and had to change ALL of my security settings, and have found that Excel in Office XP will no longer function. Still trying to fix that.

Thanks for the thread and all the valuable info!

Val

nite_monkey · « **Reply #20 on:** August 16, 2007, 08:04 PM »

I have updated my computer completely, and it is xp pro, and I haven't had any problems, had to restart it once all the updates were done, and it is still working for me.

f0dder · « **Reply #21 on:** August 16, 2007, 10:51 PM »

I'm one of the lucky people as well, updated and no problems (AMD64x2). Pretty weird if it's a microcode patch that causes problems for intel CPUs, since afaik the cpu hardware goes to some lengths to only load intel-supplied microcode patches.

I'm also lucky with DEP, I have it turned on for everything with no exclusions, and no crashes... only ill-behaved software will suffer from it anyway

Darwin · « **Reply #22 on:** August 16, 2007, 10:56 PM »

nite_monkey and fodder - glad that you came out unscathed! I am now confident that the problems on both my XP machines (didn't see any trouble on the Win2k notebook) were entirely coincidental. Time will tell, I guess. I'm watching out for any blogging or tech guru posts about the extent to which people have been affected this time around.

Deozaan · « **Reply #23 on:** August 17, 2007, 07:04 AM »

Windows update did something with my audio drivers about a month ago and it made my PC blue screen a lot. I just removed the drivers since there are no speakers connected to this thing anyway and all is well.

Darwin · « **Reply #24 on:** August 17, 2007, 12:52 PM »

I never let Windows update install patches for my non-MS hardware. Doing so in the past has led to disabled audio and on a different occasion an inoperative mouse.