Another Patch Tuesday? Round 2 for April, 2011

Ed Tittel — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:19:40 +0000

As I was poking about for a topic for today’s blog, I stumbled across Ed Bott’s ZDNet posting from yesterday entitled “The other Patch Tuesday brings crucial fixes for Windows.” I’d already noticed a login prompt when I sat down at my production PC this morning, and had wondered if MS had pushed some out-of-cycle updates out the door yesterday. Indeed, they had. What I didn’t notice (but confirmed through careful perusal of my Windows Update history over the past year) is that Bott’s observation that Microsoft seems to be getting into a twice-a-month Tuesday push on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of the month is right on the money. I guess that means it’s really a “Patch Tuesday Twofer regime” these days, rather than a single Patch Tuesday as Microsoft has sometimes proclaimed to be the case.

Here’s what hit my machine this morning, straight from the Windows Update history page:

7 Updates for the 2nd Patch Tuesday This Month!

Here’s more information on the items involved:

1. Microsoft Keyboard: an update to Intelli-Type showed up, along with more typical Patch Tuesday stuff.

2. KB2492386: Application Compatibility Update for XP, WinServ03, Vista, WinServ08, Win7, and WinServ08 R2

3. KB2506928: A link in an HTML file opened in Outlook doesn’t work in Win7 or WinServ08 R2

4. KB982018: Improve compatibility with Advanced Format Disks for Win7 and WinServ08 R2 (4KB sectors)

5. KB2522422: Cannot print from IE9 using some Canon printers

6. KB890830: Update to MS Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

7. KB2515325: Windows Explorer may crash in Win7 or WinServ2008 R2

I’m not really too sure about Items 1-6 in the preceding list as to their urgency for an out-of-cycle update, but I’ve been struggling with Windows Explorer weirdness on several of my Windows 7 machines for the past 2-3 months. I sincerely hope this update will solve those problems (which also include a refusal to update the display, even with a forced View refresh, when adding or renaming files and folders in some situations) and improve my only lingering Windows 7 system issue on those PCs. I’m going to keep an eagle eye on this, and remain optimistic, and plan to report on those observations in a week or so. Number 7 in particular bears hard scrutiny and roll-out testing potential, prior to the next Patch Tuesday on May 10th, IMHO.

Windows Enterprise Desktop » Windows 7 (and other OSes) get out-of-cycle updates

Another Patch Tuesday? Round 2 for April, 2011