14 DAY TRIAL // The November 2018 Patch Tuesday rollout brought new monthly rollups for older Windows versions as well, including Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Like cumulative updates shipped to Windows 10 devices, monthly rollups come with both security and non-security improvements. Microsoft is also rolling out security-only updates that comprise only the security fixes included in each release.
First and foremost, it’s Windows 7 the one that gets patched this month. Systems running the 2009 operating system (or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1) can download KB4467107 or security-only update KB4467106, In this case, the two have the exact same changelog, as Microsoft indicates that only security improvements are part of the monthly rollup in November.
There are fixes for the Windows app platform and framework, Windows graphics, the Windows kernel, and Windows wireless networking.
There’s a known issue in these two updates, as Microsoft says that the network connection may be broken down after installing them. You can find a possible workaround on the KB pages linked above.
The Windows 8.1 monthly rollup
On Windows 8.1, users are being provided with KB4467697 and security-only update KB4467703,
The more important change, in addition to fixes for Windows and OS components, is the addition of new Spectre Variant 2 mitigations.
“Addresses an issue that causes high CPU usage that results in performance degradation on some systems with Family 15h and 16h AMD processors. This issue occurs after installing the July 2018 Windows updates from Microsoft and the AMD microcode updates that address Spectre Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715 – Branch Target Injection),” Microsoft explains.
The good news is that the Windows 8.1 monthly rollup comes without any known issue.
You can download the updates either from Windows Update or from Microsoft’s Update Catalog, with links included in the official KB pages that you can find in this article.