14 DAY TRIAL // This month’s Patch Tuesday rollout is slowly proving to be quite a fiasco, as more reports seem to be pointing to issues with the updates Microsoft published for Windows devices.
After Windows 10 cumulative updates KB4088787 and KB4088776 showed signs of failed installs, it’s now the turn of the Windows 7 monthly rollup to cause problems, this time in a pretty different way.
There are reports that installing KB4088875,and the security-only update KB4088878 remove or break down virtual Network Interface Cards (NICs), and in some cases, they delete the static IP address configuration. The update also creates a ghost NIC on some systems, according to this reddit discussion.
KB4088875 is available for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, and the issues mentioned above are said to be experienced on both OS versions.
One reddit user says that removing the ghost NICs returns systems to full functionality and adding new ones without first deleting these greyed-out entries would only cause conflicting IPs.
Meltdown and Spectre fixes
Delaying KB4088875 and the security-only update doesn’t really seem to be an option since they bring quite critical patches for Windows 7 systems. They include new Meltdown and Spectre protections, as well as security updates for Internet Explorer, the Windows Shell, Windows Installer, and the Windows Kernel.
Microsoft is aware of four different issues with this monthly rollup for Windows 7, including a BSOD occurred when the update is installed on a 32-bit system with the Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode disabled.
“Microsoft is working on fixing this issue, and this update is, therefore, currently made available to machines with the Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode enabled,” the firm says.
We’re seeing reports that KB4088787 is no longer being offered via Windows Update, but we can’t confirm this just yet. If this is the case, Microsoft could be aware of the problem and the company temporarily halted the update until a fix is released.