Several reboots might be triggered by this update

Feb 17, 2016 06:41 GMT  ·  By

Another day, another broken patch released by Microsoft, this time causing problems on computers running Windows 7 and Remote Desktop Protocol 8.0.

One of the updates shipped by the software giant as part of February 2016 Patch Tuesday seems to be pushing Windows 7 computers into a longer reboot loop. Microsoft has already acknowledged the problem and explained that “you may have to restart the computer multiple times after you install this security update on a Windows 7-based computer that is running RDP 8.0.”

Security improvements

The update at fault is KB3126446, and the company provided it to fix security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, as part of bulletin MS16-017. The issues, however, are only experienced on Windows 7 computers updated to Service Pack 1, but the patch is also delivered to Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

“This security update resolves a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if an authenticated attacker uses Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to log on to the target system and sends specially crafted data over the connection. By default, RDP is not enabled on any Windows operating system. Systems that do not have RDP enabled are not at risk,” Microsoft says.

Basically, what it could happen after installing the update is for your PC to reboot several times, but the number of restarts is not yet specified. But once this reboot loop comes to an end, you should be able to start re-using the computer normally, with no other issues likely to be caused by this update.

Certainly, having the machine rebooted several times is not what you’d expect when installing an update released by Microsoft, but you should actually accept it because, after all, it could be worse. This month’s Patch Tuesday turns out to be a fiasco, with several Windows 10 users also complaining of problems caused by cumulative updates released by the company.