from the broken-fixes-make-PCs-into-bricks dept.
Like a needy ex-partner that just won't let go, Microsoft's legacy OSes continue to cling to the Windows behemoth's ankles. Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 have once again been bashed with the borkage bat.
Users are reporting that the fix to fix the fix that broke the desktop wallpaper in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 has left systems unbootable after an apparent boot file deletion.
The fix-fixing fix (KB4539602) was unleashed at the end of last week, and some administrators have kicked off a deployment.
It has not gone well.
One Redditor remarked that 18 2008 R2 servers had fallen victim, while another reported 30 Windows 7 computers were refusing to boot after an install.
If you don't already have the 23 September 2019 (or later) SHA-2 update installed, you will probably be having a rather ungood day.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:58PM (2 children)
If you have automatic windows updates enabled it seems more likely for Microsoft to screw up your systems than some malware ;).
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:03PM (1 child)
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Microsoft is malware
Prepare to be screwed
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:44PM
Seems like a missed opportunity... revised:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Microsoft is malware
So fuck you!
FTFY
(Score: 5, Touché) by fadrian on Monday February 17 2020, @04:13PM (3 children)
Every day is an ungood day when you use Microsoft Windows.
That is all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @05:51PM (2 children)
Think of all the computer repair people that would have to get a real job at Taco Bell if Windows actually worked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:43PM (1 child)
Didn't the people that work at Taco Bell previously work at Packard Bell?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:01PM
No.
Compaq.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:14PM (3 children)
Now we can begin to migrate these poor Win7 users to something delightful, like, say, Plan9 OS!
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @06:22PM
Instead of migrating Win7 users to something else we should deport them all to Croatia for being too stupid.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:18AM
Plan 9... I've seen the film. It'll be a big improvement for them.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday February 18 2020, @08:23AM
I use plan9 filesystem every day for virtualised storage, works really well.
The OS never took off, but left some nice remnants to the open source community.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday February 17 2020, @04:27PM (3 children)
Every nondeterminism in software must have a rational cause and an explanation.
My best guess is, those failing machines had an undetected infection of some kind.
Obviously, Microsoft cannot test their updates against all possible combinations of government backdoors.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:49PM
>> those failing machines had an undetected infection of some kind.
Undetected? The summary was very clear: they were running Microsoft Windows.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 17 2020, @06:51PM (1 child)
I'm more inclined to think they have finished developing an AI, expert system in coding.
they asked the AI to secure the servers.
the AI chose the shortest route.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday February 17 2020, @07:50PM
That would be pretty lame. They should teach her some backtracking first. Or at least, combinators.
Backtracking is for rich, combinators are for poor, and Microsoft is rich...
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday February 17 2020, @04:31PM (4 children)
Microsoft has made it abundantly clear that they don't want to spend the money maintaining older versions of Windows, and are continuing to do a piss-poor job of it. The goal is to force everyone to downgrade to Windows 10.
For some reason, I'm pretty sure their Total Cost of Ownership calculations that they use to scare people away from Linux and BSD don't include the cost, time, and hassle of switching away from versions of Windows that have been deprecated by Microsoft. By comparison, upgrading a Linux box takes about 30 minutes, and generally leaves a working system working just fine.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @05:14PM
The trouble with that theory is that Microsoft is doing the same piss-poor job with Windows 10 as they have been with Windows 7.
They also like to trot out the old "oh noes, you'll have to learn a whole new user interface", ignoring the fact that you have to do the same thing when leaving Windows 7.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @05:31PM (2 children)
Regardless of % usage, it's disturbing when you consider that Windows XP is *still* considered a "threat" to Microsoft even in 2020 (take pause and put windows 7 and server 2008/R2 on the side for a moment and let that sink in). The existence and any availability of XP (POS or otherwise) competes with newer Windows 10 rolling release *subscriptions.* Microsoft still is actively issuing DCMA takedowns when they find versions of XP surface on the interwebz, but they don't seem to care about anything Windows 2000 and older. Since the hardware manufacturers are also in bed with Satan Nadella, they too want you to buy a new computer bundled with shitty Windows freaking 10.
Moreover any continued availability even of older Office 2000 and 2003 also still competes with newer Office product sales, and Microsoft would be absolutely devastated if people were to EVER find out how much better proper drop-down menus are where you can easily find what you're looking for quickly. They don't want people to know that it's possible to indefinitely own the right to run stable software past its life cycle, without having reoccurring subscription fees or else the software literally ceases to function.
I think I recall seeing some interview (sorry, too lazy to find source) of someone within Microsoft (was it Developers Ballmer?) who admitted that XP was "too good" -- seriously, too good? What ever happened to making a product that actually IS good? I'm sure they also consider Windows 7 'too good.' After the whole developers/QA layoffs circa 2015, it's very clear Microsoft 'don't give fuck' about anything that truly matters when it comes to an operating system. The tinfoil in me says stuff like Vista and Windows 8.0 were intentionally premeditated crippled sabotage, and not just piss poor negligence, although it certainly is reckless to say the least. This is far worse than the toxic 'move fast and break shit' mentality. Fuck Microsoft, fuck Poettering (and his git commit cronies) and his systemd svchost.exe bullshit.
So yeah, uhhh everything's under control, situation normal. I just had a slight conniptions malfunction, but uh everything is perfectly alright now, we're fine, we're all fine here now. Thank you, how are you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:00PM
> Office 2000 and 2003
Don't those versions phone home when you register them (supply the turn-on code)?
Still using Office 97 when I need Word & Excel compatibility (also, they run really fast on newer hardware...). Pretty sure this was the last version that didn't talk to any kind of MS license server(??)
Of course this older software doesn't seem to print very well through Win7, I often have to re-open in Libre Office to print (for the rare paper copy).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @03:08PM
What's your operating number?
But seriously, the only thing I would advise you is to watch the ad hominems. Your comment is 99.9% accurate, but labeling people (like "Satan Nadella" and "Developers Ballmer") may provide you with some release but it undermines the trust of your readers. Unless you're trying to intentionally preach to the choir. Better still are those rare moments when you can convince someone else to join your position from the opposite side.
OK. Nevermind. You're all clear kid. Just blow this thing and go home....
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:43PM
how about another joke murray?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Monday February 17 2020, @05:38PM (2 children)
The only remaining question is if it's intentional.
Well, that, and why do so many people tolerate it?
Ok, so two questions... Is it intentional? and Why is it tolerated? Is it for convenience?
THREE questions....
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Monday February 17 2020, @09:40PM
"Blue.-----No, Red!"
AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:15AM
Among our questions are:
Is it intentional?
Why is it tolerated?
Is it for convenience?
Why do people pay to do somebody else's alpha testing?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2020, @08:51PM
My servers don't even have monitors, never mind a GUI. So RAM-wasting fluff like wallpaper's right out.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday February 17 2020, @09:42PM
Get off Windows: the TCO is just too high.
Pretty bad when your bought and paid for copy of windows is worse than the volunteer software that is linux: as Billy Gates calls it; a "toy operating system".
Pretty fscking bad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday February 18 2020, @12:45AM
the muzak was cut abruptly and the loudspeaker voice announced: systemd team emergency meetup, systemd emergency meetup in room 1 (what else).
Lennart left his playtetrisd module UML screen and hurried to the meeting room.
- Lenny... we have a problem
- Guessed so, must be urgent...
- No, but it's grave. Microsoft upped their game. We have reports that touching wallpaper settings code can render the system unbootable.
- Oh. my. God. This means...
- This means their codebase is still waaay shittier than ours. They will make billions out of support while patches for pulseaudio and systemd are still flowing in, even when you insult their mothers and their whole family in their native tongue.
- Fuck fuck fuck I can't put more spaghetti in our code! we are getting to the point that nobody knows what it does anymore, and when we add useless code, the thing runs faster! We have reached peak shit!
- Yes, Microsoft has had decades to solve these problems, and they don't have to open the source to save face.
- Well, fuck them. I will reverse engineer the fucking whole win 3.11 and put it into my tetrisd. How about that?
- Let's cross our unit files and hope it works...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by shortscreen on Tuesday February 18 2020, @01:27AM
I haven't booted my Win7 machine lately but I suspect that it would still work and that the people having problems are just doing something weird like leaving windows update enabled.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:42PM
for some use cases i can understand people clinging to m$ products.
however for people doing "document processing" i would like to offer the insight that the main component of your computer is your harddisk (or ssd), that is STORAGE.
what m$ tries to do s bind your storage to their os. it is true that you can remove a hdd with windblows and all your data/documents and connect it to another computer. but does this other computer really need to run windows?
the answer is no!
chances are also that if your windows computer fails but your storage is fine connecting it to a newly bought computer will make the installed windblows operating system have a fit once it notices the new (non lightning struck) hardware.
so if you're not a special use case, stop letting m$ abuse you by binding their os to your storage.
with linux, if your computer hardware fails but your storage is okay, connecting it to newly bought hardware will 99% have linux boot up from the old intact storage device!