Woody Leonhard
Columnist
Woody Leonhard is a columnist at Computerworld and author of dozens of Windows books, including "Windows 10 All-in-One for Dummies." Get the latest on and vent your spleen about Windows at AskWoody.com.
It's time to block Windows Automatic Updating
Patch Tuesday’s tomorrow, which means today offers an excellent opportunity to make sure your machine is braced for impact. Here’s your step-by-step guide to blocking patches as they come out the chute, so you can install them...
Microsoft: Watch out for zero days; deferred patches, not so much
Yesterday’s Blue Hat IL presentation from MSRC shows that, in 2017-18, the threat from zero days far exceeds the threat of delaying patches by 30 days. Moreover, the vast majority of zero days are used in targeted attacks, not in...
The January Windows and Office patches are good to go
There are some rather obscure issues, but by and large, now’s a very good time to get Windows and Office caught up on patching. If you want to avoid Win10 1809 for now, block it. Watch out for the, uh, edge cases, and patch away.
Microsoft Patch Alert: January patches include a reprisal of KB 4023057 and a swarm of lesser bugs
Patches are crawling out of the woodwork, and bugs follow as night unto day. Be particularly cautious if you’re running a turn-of-the-century database application; and if you don’t want to be forced to Win10 1809, get your shields up. ...
There’s a newly acknowledged Edge local IP networking bug in Win10
Responding to complaints, Microsoft acknowledges that all of this month’s Win10 Patch Tuesday cumulative updates make it impossible to access certain local pages from Edge.
Microsoft starts its 'phased rollout' of Win10 1809, now controlled by a next-generation machine-learning model
It’s official. In the mind-bending (and internally inconsistent) quagmire that has become Windows updating terminology, Win10 version 1809 is now in 'phased rollout' but not yet in 'Semi-Annual Channel (not Targeted).' If you don’t...
MS releases KB 4476976, a test Win10 1809 cumulative update, to the Insider Preview Ring. Bravo!
In the three years since Microsoft defined its Insider Rings, we’d seen it use them in the way they were intended only once. Now we’re up to twice. At last, more signs of intelligence in Redmond.
Patch Tuesday updates for Win7, KB 4480970 and KB 4480960 knock out networking
Reports are popping up all over that yesterday’s Win7 Monthly Rollup and Security-only patches are causing big problems with networks using SMBv2 shares. The known solution is to uninstall the patch. There’s also a registry fix that...
Microsoft is yanking patches already. Make sure automatic update is disabled.
The year is yet young, and Microsoft has already issued, then plucked, four bad patches. Do yourself a favor and let the cannon fodder test the patches before you put them on your machine.
Be of good cheer: The Windows/Office December patching minefield looks clear
There’s still a great deal of uncertainty about the way-out-of-band “emergency” Internet Explorer patch last week and its changing workaround instructions. Server 2016’s known bugs list runs more than a page. Still, now’s a reasonably...
It’s official: Win10 ‘seekers’ will get the ill-fated version 1809. You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
Yesterday Microsoft announced that, with a few notable exceptions, anyone running Windows 10 who clicks “Check for updates” may well end up with the new Win10 September-October-November-December 2018 Update, version 1809.
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