back to article Microsoft slows Windows 11 24H2 Patch Tuesday due to a 'compatibility issue'

Microsoft set a new record with June's security update for the time between release and an admission of borkage. The patch Tuesday update arrived yesterday and contained a number of critical fixes. However, after trumpeting its arrival for Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft hastily followed up with a warning that: "We've identified a …

  1. Winkypop Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Seems appropriate

    Well that's great, that's just f***in' great man. Now what the f*** are we supposed to do?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seems appropriate

      Linux

      1. NoneSuch Silver badge
        Go

        Re: Seems appropriate

        Quote from the Late, great Bill Paxton in Aliens:

        “That’s it, man! Game over, man! Game over! What the f*** are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?”

        Coming a close second is Sigourney Weaver:

        "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

        Choose your adventure.

      2. GNU Enjoyer
        Angel

        Re: Seems appropriate

        That won't do.

        You'll need to at least install GNU as well to get an operating computer.

        1. m4r35n357 Silver badge

          Re: Seems appropriate

          Or Busybox/Musl/Clang, Android, etc . . .

          Not that I _really_ disagree with you, but I will never forgive GNU for the baroque & unnecessary "info system", which rendered much of the project effectively undocumented.

    2. Roopee Silver badge
      Linux

      Re: Seems appropriate

      Stop using Windows?

      Just a thought...

      If I didn’t say it, someone else will :)

    3. Badgerfruit

      Re: Seems appropriate

      Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure

      1. Bottle_Cap

        Re: Seems appropriate

        So how do we get out of this chickenshit outfit?

      2. m4r35n357 Silver badge

        Re: Seems appropriate

        Hold on a second. Our victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer base has a substantial dollar value attached to it.

    4. cmdrklarg

      Re: Seems appropriate

      Maybe we could build a fire. Sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that?

      1. PRR Silver badge

        Re: Seems appropriate

        > Maybe we could build a fire. Sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that?

        Kumbya

    5. GioCiampa
      Mushroom

      Re: Seems appropriate

      ...it's the only way to be sure...

  2. alain williams Silver badge

    I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

    but surely these things should be testable ? I would have thought that their contacts with hardware vendors would enable them to have pre-patch-release test builds that could be sent out and installed. To do so is in everyone's interest.

    Why is it that the Linux distributions, with their much smaller budgets and not so good relationships with the hardware people, have a much, much lower incidence of borkage ?

    1. really_adf

      Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

      "Why is it that the Linux distributions, with their much smaller budgets and not so good relationships with the hardware people, have a much, much lower incidence of borkage ?"

      At a guess, because a greater proportion of changes are well-considered, and made by and/or go through people who care more (or at all).

      But while I share your perception I am mindful that reported impact may be reduced by one or more of lower hardware diversity, lower user numbers, and higher probability of self-resolution.

    2. billdehaan

      Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

      Years ago, I was hired to do the server side of a project, and the customer hired another company to do the web front end. The differences in attitude between the two groups couldn't have been greater.

      The back end people mostly came from avionics, which had a "if the software crashes, so does the plane" mindset. Every permutation was tested, and the front end complained that we were holding them up.

      Once we shipped, we were done. The web side said they were done, too, so the customer then changed the site passwords, and they couldn't get in. And then the bug reports started to flood in.

      They weren't back end issues, they were all web problems. Of course, the web developers said, you changed the passwords so we can't administer it. And by "administer", they meant debugging. To those of us in the back end, administering meant making backups, adding hardware for load balancing as demand grew, and things like that. But to the web team, software was never actually finished, it was a live thing that they just kept changing.

      I see the same difference in mindset between the Windows and Linux arenas.

      Windows has a much larger user base, a much larger range of hardware and software to support, and a far less technical user community, all of which makes testing more difficult. But they also have a different mindset of "if it doesn't work this week, we'll just put it in next week's patch".

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

        Windows actually has a far smaller range of supported hardware.

        But yes, it's the mindset. Linux is "The Server", which must not fail. Windows, well, have you tried turning it off and back on again?

        1. billdehaan

          Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

          Windows actually has a far smaller range of supported hardware.

          If you're talking about legacy computers, yes. Windows won't support 80486 or 32 bit machines any more that Linux does, absolutely.

          But when you're dealing with peripherals, it's a different story.

          If you buy any USB device, it's expected to work on Windows. Device creators write device drivers for their new USB music synthesizer, or Bluetooth security dongle, when they release it. Few of them bother with Linux.

          One of the first thing Linux users have to get used to is confirming Linux support for any peripheral because we can't make the assumption that the hardware will work on Linux. Windows users can.

      2. Cloudseer

        Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

        The comparison is a little unfair, as the backend supports one known server infrastructure, whereas the web guys support all of the world's device permutations.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

      Why is it that the Linux distributions, with their much smaller budgets and not so good relationships with the hardware people, have a much, much lower incidence of borkage ?

      Because there are far, far, fewer systems running Linux than Windows?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

        Depends. Desktops, yes. Servers, not so much.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. PCScreenOnly Silver badge

    24H2 is really a dog

    So slow and continuous problems with "patches"

    Avoid at all costs

    1. Ilgaz

      Re: 24H2 is really a dog

      I just trialed Adobe LR for 20 min and cancelled. The OS overhead was 30%. On Linux it is 3% Adobe chose it. They just couldn`t require a RHEL or SEL and ship.

  4. Uncle William

    I set my updates to defer by 5 days and then wait to see if there are any snafus like this.

    1. Ilgaz

      Horrible zero days, aged months. I was also installing 6500 (yes) updates to a core2duo 8G Mac. opensuse tw. It only used some more fan ;-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I set my updates to "never" and don't worry about any of their hopeless chicanery. Haven't had anything resembling a virus since the early 2000s. Believe It Or Not!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yes, but to be fair, there aren't that many virus infections for DOS..

        :)

  5. beardman
    FAIL

    This is what happens when you put LLM in charge of update release. I know, they haven't said this is the case, but given their push of copilot down engineers throats...

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Terminator

      30%, according to their CEO

      Which... explains a lot.

  6. JWLong Silver badge

    Microsoft

    Do they even try any more?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft

      They don't need to. They have user base which had cooperated in locking themselves in.

  7. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    QC

    Did something get past quality control? Erm... yes, it's very easy to slip past a - and I'm being generous here - department which is so far underfunded it's a wonder it exists at all. Quality control at Microsoft is abysmal. Their "OS" is riddled with bugs and fixes and patches all over the place to make it work. So much of what I encounter day-to-day with microsoft is inconsistent, flaky or poorly designed in the first place.

    It wouldn't surprise me if the problem was the it's now so big and so old and so ill-conceived that nobody there has enough understanding to know how it is supposed to work. It's taken on a life of its own and the software engineers at MS probably need to spend a lot of time trying to second-guess how something is meant to work.

    Unwieldy piece of shit.

    1. Ropewash

      Re: QC

      So old that the people whose knowledge is key to the project are now either retired or passed on. I've got a feeling that the map of their code has sections labelled "Here Be Dragons"

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: QC

        I've got a feeling that the map of their code has sections labelled "Here Be Dragons"

        Probably has places where you can fall right off the edge.

    2. David Hicklin Silver badge

      Re: QC

      But they just have to keep on fiddling with it to add new shiny features that few people want or need just because....well because of what? In the early days most new features were welcomed and probably increased the sales...but now?

      I wish they would just leave things alone and fix the bugs ...a forlorn hope it seems.

  8. Swordfish1

    Again - I've had to use "fix problems with windows update" - which I've had to use for the last two security updates.

    Just updating the patch, by itself causes the system to crash, and corrupt the component store.

    Running SFC -its OK, then DISm see's a problem - Restore health just comes up with an error after waiting ages while monitoring the CBM log.

    But when I run "fix problems with windows update" it works

    SFC is ok, and DISM reports no component store problems.

    The whole process takes another 3 hours of wasted time MS, and my system spec is well capable of running Windows 11.

    Other updates install no issues, its always security patches.

    Fed up with this monthly farce MS

    CS

  9. JcRabbit

    Quality gates? What quality gates?!

    1. Excused Boots Silver badge
      Devil

      It’ll be the ones they’ve left open so as to be more agile!

  10. ecofeco Silver badge

    LOL I wonder if this is related

    Dell has just issued a tech bulletin saying that the latest Win 11 updates may cause some PCs to freeze when configured with wireless mice and keyboards when waking from hibernation.

  11. Ilgaz

    re:devices

    You killed the phone and abandoned its users. We call them:computers

  12. Andy The Hat

    reasons ...

    Perhaps the issue is the "cause to fail to run on incompatible hardware" incompatibility patch requiring another patch because Win11 still actually works on incompatible hardware by bypassing the patched patches ...

    Just let us run it on older hardware, we know it does! We may be mad but you could make money out of us and we could have a stress-free life. Give up the fight!

    1. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

      Re: reasons ...

      They have an ulterior motive. Or motives actually. They want people to move onto hardware that isn't necessary now, but WILL be necessary to run some as-yet-unanncounced piece-of-shit facility that they can charge for. Older hardware can't run it. There'll be another one of these "culls" where older hardware won't be able to run Windows 12 or 13 or whatever, and it'll have something to do with AI, no doubt.

      "Can't run Windows 13 on hardware which does less than 400 TOPS on its NPU. And you have to have TPM 4.0 because the government said so. And Windows 12 won't work for much longer. Sorry not sorry"

  13. JQW

    Easy Anti-Cheat

    It appears that the incompatibility was with Easy Anti-Cheat, a common kernel-based anti-cheating tool used by several popular games. Running such a game could cause Windows to reboot. Which is something Easy Anti-Cheat appears to do quite often on its own anyway!

  14. Nematode Bronze badge

    Times like these I always imagine the Muppets Swedish chef sketch/song..

    Dummmm de dumm de dumpy dumpy dummm...

    Dad da da-da da da dum

    Bork! Bork! Bork!

  15. Tron Silver badge

    It's a jolly good job...

    ...nothing important depends on Windows functioning reliably.

  16. Who-me

    The real problem is the Agile development methodology. It’s a crap approach and it’s time we acknowledged it as such.

    Anyway, anyone identified what the issue is? I see I’ve just received this patch for the patch as an ‘optional’ update and yet I’ve not seen any problems today…on both an Intel machine and an AMD. Both seem to be working fine.

    1. Who-me

      Ah, looking at the MS site, it appears there is a clash with the gaming "Easy Anti-Cheat" system. You shouldn't see it if you don't have that installed.

  17. Fuzzy Fitzpatrick
    Unhappy

    Time to try Mint again

    I’m so very tired of this shit. How often do we see this kind of headline now? I might have to put up with this at work but I’ve not long installed mint on to my own machine, and mostly down to updates. While Win 10 was the mainstay of MS I used to hear people complain about updates rebooting machines while they were working, a problem I, thankfully, hadn’t experienced, but since my move to Windows 11 it just seems to reboot whenever the hell it wants, regardless of the settings I set. So fuck you microsoft, and your bloated, spying, pos OS. I won’t be looking back.

  18. drankinatty

    Strange, I haven't had a single issue with Win11 updates

    $ uname -r

    6.15.1-arch1-2

    How sweet it is to be free!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Technically, ALL hardware is incompatible with Windows..

    Isn't that why it's so full of drivers?

    :)

  20. hamiltoneuk

    NO Easy Anti-Cheat here!

    I'm not running Easy Anti-Cheat here but I still got the updated update. The intital update installed after a lot of persuasion by disabling Update Services and deleting the Software Distbution folder. I've seen that happen before.

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