Users are reporting a new error after installing KB3004394

Dec 17, 2014 15:03 GMT  ·  By

This month’s Patch Tuesday rollout was quite a fiasco for Microsoft, as one of the updates it released to computers across the world caused several big problems, including a sudden message which pops out and says that Windows is not genuine.

Tech-savvy users most likely know that this particular message is being displayed whenever a computer is running a copy of Windows that does not seem to be legitimate and owners have 30 days to activate this particular installation of the OS.

Otherwise, the whole operating system is locked, as it is considered that there is risk of piracy, so you can feel the frustration of those who actually purchased Windows but got stuck with this error after installing this month’s Patch Tuesday updates.

What exactly happened?

Right now, it appears that KB3004394 is at fault for most of the problems experienced by users after the December update rollout, and Microsoft has already confirmed some of the issues that might show up on Windows 7 computers

At this point, it appears that Windows 7 is the only version of the OS that’s being knocked down by this patch, so both Windows 8 and 8.1 seem to be on the safe side for now.

Here’s what one of the users explained on Microsoft’s Community forums:

“I first noticed the pop-up on December 10th.  It has not shown itself today.  At least not that I have noticed. There was a update today so maybe that fixed it. It seems to go away after about half an hour. Maybe this is something that I should just ignore. Seemed pretty important when it first popped up but seems like it might just be a glitch or something.”

This month’s Patch Tuesday rollout took place on December 9, so it’s pretty clear that all these problems were caused by a botched update.

How to fix it

At this point, the best way to fix the problem is to completely uninstall KB3004394 from your computer or to restore to a previously created backup.

Microsoft has already rolled out a fix for this problem and pulled the faulty update, which means that no one can download it right now, but we’re still not sure that all issues caused by the original patch are fixed.

Users posting on forums are still reporting errors these days, so it remains to be seen if the new patch is 100 percent effective or not. Microsoft itself recommended users to remove KB3004394 from their PCs, so do that and see if any other problems are being experienced.

Windows 7 Windows Update (5 Images)

Botched update on Windows 7
Windows 7 desktopWindows 7 Start menu
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