14 DAY TRIAL // It’s a well-known fact that Microsoft has delivered quite a lot of broken updates in the last few months and many are still yet to be fixed, even though the company released more or less complex solutions to help people address the resulting issues.
As far as KB3000061 is concerned, the kernel mode driver patch failed to install for some Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 systems, and while Microsoft said in mid-October that it was looking into the matter, users were a lot more effective in addressing the problems.
As Woody Leonhard of InfoWorld writes today, the first workaround was posted by CountryKING on TechNet a couple of days after last month’s Patch Tuesday rollout, explaining that deleting a registry key should be enough to solve all problems.
Microsoft hasn’t actually provided any information at that time, but in a post recently made by a company engineer, the user-found workaround is indeed the best way to repair the issue on the affected computer.
How to repair the botched update
While the reason the update actually fails to install is yet to be determined, the workaround doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes and allows all systems that are impacted by the botched update to deploy the KB3000061 bulletin just fine.
All you need to do is to manually delete the following registry key:
Once the update attempts to install, it automatically recreates it, so in case it already exists, KB3000061 deployment is automatically blocked.
Microsoft “still investigating”
Even though it’s a bit surprising that users actually moved faster than Microsoft, the company says that it’s still investigating the issues and is working to find the root cause of the problem.
“This occurs when servers have been upgraded from 2008R2 to 2012 (or WinVista to Win8). The key is being carried over in these scenarios and not being set to the proper value. We're investigating why this occurred but deleting the key and rebooting the system will resolve the problem,” the company said.
At the same time, it’s also a bit surprising to see Microsoft confirming this workaround only two weeks after its initial release, but at least it’s a good thing that the company is now collaborating closer with its users to address problems and offer an overall improved experience to everyone else.