Microsoft and community release scripts to help mitigate Defender mess Techies are fearing the worst in efforts to recover from Microsoft's bug laden Defender for Endpoint pre-weekend rollout after updates removed icons and applications shortcuts from Windows 11 and 10 desktop, Taskbar and Start Menu. The update dispatched to users on the morning of January 13 caused nightmares for Windows admins …
>Perhaps the US should get the rollout first from time to time instead of the rest of the world beta testing installation-hosing patches for them. Only fair, right?
Otherwise given the frequency of failure a good (US no-win-no-fee) lawyer could probably get Windows and Windows Defender updates categorized as WMD's...
They've cost me more than a day's work as my PC was one of those hit by their complete lack of testing. I ended up having to reinstall Windows from scratch. I've also had one program fail to re-activate because, Corel say, my activation code has been used too many times!
So, to steal and repurpose a line from Linus Torvalds, "Fuck you, Microsoft!"
I'm not seeing any problems, Microsoft is an excellent developer and I've not seen any problems for more than a year now ... oh wait, maybe that's because I'm still running Windows 7 and it's working very reliably. Yes, I'm getting Google Drive warnings but I can delete the app and solve all those Google issues.
.. are you saving money yet by not switching to alternatives?
Yeah, thought so. You know this will keep happening - you are the beta test now.
Basically, you're rolling the dice with your productivity and uptime every single Tuesday (although some take a bit longer to roll them, but in the end you will), then you whinge a lot, and then you continue to do the exact same again because everyone is very careful to avoid counting the large elephant in the room called wasted staff time. And again. Cue reference to Einstein's comment about doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different outcome.
BTW, enjoy tomorrow - it's Tuesday yet again..
"because everyone is very careful to avoid counting the large elephant in the room called wasted staff time. "
Which in most businesses is not captured but simply added to their customers' bills like actual productive working time, so in essence there is no wasted staff time ;)
Ah yes, the process to make yourself even more uncompetitive whilst risking a massive fine because you join the ever swelling ranks of companies getting fined because they lost customer data via a breach. Let's hope you were smart enough to at least isolate the factory control networks so your process control stays up.
Thankfully you get at least a discount on the fine if you're big enough. If the likes of Equifax were fined what your average small shop has to pay per customer leak they would be out of business, IMHO rightfully so because they at least have the money to do it right.
We're seeing where Nadella management is driving Microsoft to. The fact is Microsoft started to save a lot on development and testing (more than before, for those who belive it always did). From a revenues perspective it was hidden by the shift to expensive cloud subscription (and even there issues surfaced more than once...). Nadella is turning Microsoft into the next IBM - services! services! services! - something he believe he can do using cheap developers and little testing, so he can fatten profits - for a while, at least.
This wasn't a Windows update that caused the issue, but a Windows Defender security update.
Not that this get MS off the hook, but does show your lack of comprehension of what you skipped over for the joy of a snarky comment.
But whatever.
What a plonker. Windows Defender is an integral component of Windows - just try to disable/uninstall it. "This operation could not be completed. Access is denied." I see only one post with a lack of comprehension...
But whatever.
It wasn't Windows Defender: It was WD "for Endpoint", which is a different product.
I've not tried to uninstall/disable WDFE. I've not (in the past) had any trouble disabling WD. Disabling WD is a normal supported operation, so you must be looking at a different system than I have.
Pray thee, oh mighty wise one, where in the original comment was any reference to the type of update?
Moreover, what difference would it have made? Downtime is downtime is downtime, whatever the specifics of this week's Redmond c/f*ckup are.
Last but not least, what are you doing here if not for the snarky (yet true) comments?
Begone, heathen.
:)
Maybe it's time to put together a class action lawsuit for all the damage the last 3 months or so of Microsoft patches have caused with SQL, Active Directory, Windows 10/11, etc.? The lack of vetting of these patches and updates before being released into the wild is getting kind of ridiculous to say the least!
Not until you find a way to declare some of the Terms you are forced to subscribe to as illegal or invalid. I think in the UK you may have some traction with the laws that forbid unfair contract clauses, but beware what you start because Microsoft et al are hiding behind the fact that small developers cannot afford lawyers.
If there's a clawback on those terms it should be reserved for the big boys, but they have, of course, the money to buy the laws (/politicians/lawyers) they need - that's the first aim of fast growth at small margins. After that it's milking the sheep until they squeek.
So good luck, but don't hold your breath.
Microsoft is way ahead of you on that, at least in the United States. The terms you must accept to use Windows says that you waive any right to sue Microsoft and that you must use a Microsoft paid arbitrator. This group will not bite the hand that feeds them, so they will always find in favor of Microsoft.
After perusing that mess of a script (Oh boy, was that fun) it appears to do two things
1. Scan the Volume Shadow Copy (vss) on the actual computer for *.lnk and restore it
2. Scan the registry for installed applications and create new new shortcuts in the Start Menu directory.
While 2 is ok enough, the damn vss is turned off by default after Windows 7 in favor of OneDrive being used to backup user data on workstations. So, if you have roaming profiles or rediredted user folders, etc, this script only restores the start menu shortcuts. (Though you can, through the script, get an idea how to do this sort of restore on a Windows file server).
Essentially, anyone following Microsoft guidance on the preffered ways to handle user data on workstations are borked when it comes to shortcuts and have to homebrew something to sort it out.
Microsoft is such a mess in a way that echoes the story of the Tower of Babel. They are too big and it is just making a huge mess for people. Microsoft wants a singular, all encompassing ecosystem, but the various organs of that great beast seem unable or incapable of communicating with each other. (From interviews and hearing from folks that have worked there, I am pretty sure I know which one is more prevalent). All we seem to get out of it with regularity is a crumbling structure, much indegestion, and a big mess.
Quite a few of my applications disappeared from Add/Remove Programs, even though the binaries are still installed.
So it may well be impossible to properly uninstall or even update them, because the Registry keys are gone.
It's not possible to automatically fix this mess, because the data is gone. Erased.
I'm hoping our legal dept are putting together the invoice for the week or so of everyone's salaries that this failure to do basic diligence has cost.
... please remember that those sorts of screw-ups are per-originating-company, and not confined to any particular operating system.
Has anyone here been burned by Steam?
https://www.theregister.com/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_week_steam_cleans_linux_pcs/
Yep! Best toy I've bought myself in a long, long time! Even bought my Missus one too. There we were on Sunday, happily playing Raft while slouching on the sofa! Rooted out Luigis Mansion on the Gamecube and a full blown Linux desktop stood up in secs ready to be used to check in on work. Some evenings I barely drag my fat, lazy carcass off the sofa 'cos the SteamDeck is such a great toy!
Yes. Eight years ago, my data was burned by Steam, and I have neither forgotten nor forgiven.
It was not just one person screwing up; it was that the work was given no competent review. Making shiny cool new things does not "make up" for that.
I was not defending Microsoft. I had hoped that people would not forget about other companies' bad practices in their eagerness to flog Microsoft. (And because Microsoft has such a huge portion of the market, when they screw up, it's inflicted on huge numbers of people.)
I suspect it is not new. As a customer I seem to remember doing the work in the early 1980s.
I have heard it said that Bill’s great insight was: Good enough, is enough. I’m not sure about that - It could well be: Just good enough, is enough, and is cheap enough to take the market. Sturgeon's revelation is an adage stating: "Ninety percent of everything is crap". Wasn’t Microsoft’s market share about 90%?
We see problems and everyone says that it's a "new" problem that can be "fixed" but the problem is not fixed, they just get the software working again...
"The most deadly thing in software is the concept, which almost universally seems to be followed, that you are going to specify what you are going to do, and then do it. And that is where most of our troubles come from. The projects that are called successful, have met their specifications. But those specifications were based upon the designers' ignorance before they started the job." -- Douglas Taylor Ross, NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1968
"Who on earth released that update without checking the impact? There are thousands of administrators across the globe now having to repair their environments, which is causing a major impact on productivity."
Guess who? You are just a tiny part of the test bed. And why should they care about your productivity -- they have you money already and are too powerful to argue with.
When they have you by the balls, who gives a shit about your hearts and minds?
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