Friday, October 26, 2007

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

Ian Beyer wrote in his blog today about a Microsoft mess-up. Microsoft sent some patches through WSUS, one of which is slowing networks to a crawl. The offending patch is their new version of Windows Desktop Search (version 3.01). As Ian noted, they sent it right through those using WSUS that were willing to trust Microsoft (he was allowing patches Microsoft deemed critical to go right through).

MBS Clients Not Affected!
Fortunately for our firm's retainer clients who use our server as their WSUS source, none were effected. We don't automatically apply any Microsoft patches until it is tested.

Oops!
Microsoft originally denied they did anything wrong, but then changed their story and apologized for it (see ComputerWorld article -- Ian, is that you they quoted?).

The Problem, and The Fix
The by-product of this error is that desktops and notebooks slow to a snail's pace while they index and re-index hard drive files. The fix is relatively easy... at least it was for me (I'm a tester / guinea pig on our system for all MS patches).
  1. Go into Control Panel's Add/Remove programs on each computer.
  2. Remove Windows Desktop Search 3.01 (it will list among all installed programs and not with updates).
I hope that works as easily for you as it did for me,

Nick

1 comment:

Network Monkey said...

Yup, that's me they quoted :)

I hadn't seen the followup article yet. Thanks for the tip (and the hat tip!)