KB4039884 up for grabs, but not without known issues

Aug 29, 2017 08:09 GMT  ·  By

Windows updates are still a huge pain in the neck for Microsoft, as the company is often hit with reports of failed installs and bugs caused by the botched patches that it ships every month.

This is what happened with the Windows 7 August Monthly patch rollup KB4034664, which introduced a series of problems affecting users with two monitors.

Basically, the update broke down the display on the second monitor, causing rendering issues that required a manual workaround provided by Microsoft itself and involving enabling Desktop Composition and then configure the main monitor in the monitor layout.

Earlier this week, however, Microsoft attempted to address the problem with a new patch, which would have made the manual workaround pretty much unneeded. But it looks like the KB4039884 update in charging of doing the whole magic is broken as well and introducing a series of other problems on Windows 7 systems.

New update, new bugs

As Woody Leonhard notes, there are users complaining that this update, despite installing fine, restores a number of update files to old versions, which in its turn triggers notifications for more than 20 important and recommended updates in Windows Update, even though all these patches have already been installed.

Removing the update eliminates the bug as well, but without it, the only way to deal with the dual monitor bug is to turn to the manual workaround.

Microsoft itself reveals in the new update release notes that it’s aware of two different bugs, but none of them points to false notifications of Windows updates on Windows 7 systems. The company does say, however, that WordPad could crash on computers running the patch, and at this point, no workaround is available, with a fix to be shipped at a later time.

Right now, however, the manual workaround appears to be the only safe fix, at least until next month when Microsoft ships a fresh batch of updates. It remains to be seen, however, if the company will get that one right though.