KB938194, Beware!

Filed under Troubleshooting, Vista

This Vista Update, delivered 9/4/07 at about 3am (for one machine, anyways) has some serious issues, so beware.

Now, when I load Word 2007, if I immediately quit Word, it crashes. And if I attempt to load a document by dbl clicking on it, Word fails to load the document completely, just opens an empty window. Even odder though, is that I have a different machine that I pulled the update earlier for (it’s set to manual update) and it’s fine.

The only difference between the two that I can see, is that on the failed machine, Word was OPEN at the time of the upgrade.

Even worse, UNDOING the Patch caused the machine to fail to boot. It would start to boot up, then just shut down.

I had to use the “Boot to last known valid configuration” option, then use the System Restore Point function to rewind back to before the 3am patch.

Once I’d done that, everything ran fine again.

Ah the joys of automated updates.

3 Comments

  1. Ralf says:

    Yayy, system restore! People gripe about it, but it’s saved my bacon enough for me to build a new pig.

    Did you get to try your bootable USB keydrive?

  2. Darin says:

    Hehe. No, I was trying to avoid panicking too hard. I +really+ didn’t want to go messing with it too much. It’s my wife’s machine, and she doesn’t do development or install stuff, so there was only one possibility.

    Then, when she said she’d heard a beep around 4am, then tried it a little later and things were hosed, the first thing I thought was to check out the Windows Update "history". Sure enough, 3:03 am, a patch was installed.

    Getting rid of it was the main problem.

    Odd that it applied fine on my main workstation, though…

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