December has been a tumultuous month for Microsoft patches. This Patch Tuesday resulted in an unusual number of faulty updates, with issues that range from disabling Windows Updates to breaking the ActiveX features within Office. Find below the lineup for all affected Microsoft December Patches as well as recommended solutions.
A security update for Internet Explorer, KB3008923, is currently afflicting users with instability as well as limited functionality. Users are reporting intermittent crashes for Internet Explorer 9 after installing this security update. Microsoft has acknowledged the issues but has not yet recommended a solution. The best solution in the short term is to uninstall this update until a fix is available.
KB3004394 was originally designed to improve security for the Windows Root Certificate Program yet it came with a handful of unintended consequences. The most critical issues being that it will prevent Windows Update from installing any future updates and it will also disable Windows Defender. Other reported issues include the inability to install drivers for AMD video cards, ‘Not Genuine Windows Copy’ messages, and unwarranted UAC prompts. These issues are only being seen on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. Microsoft is currently advising to uninstall the KB3004394 patch on Windows 7 SP1 and 2008 R2 SP1 machines, or to manually download and install the KB3024777 update which will completely remove the troublesome patch. Microsoft has pulled this update.
KB3002339, a patch for Visual Studio 2012, hangs on install. Microsoft recommends to cancel the installation from the Windows Update manager and to manually download and install the patch.
KB2553154, a Microsoft Office 2010 security update, creates issues with ActiveX within the Office products. Microsoft has published a detailed solution to resolve these issues that can be found here.
The final faulty patch this month, KB3011970, causes problems rendering Silverlight websites and videos with DRM properties. Microsoft has since pulled the update but has not advised anything for currently affected users. Affected parties, such as Time Warner Cable, are suggesting to uninstall the update manually.