14 DAY TRIAL // One of the updates that Microsoft has recently rolled out keeps reinstalling on a number of Windows 10 devices, even though it appears to successfully deploy at the first attempt.
Posts on Microsoft Community forums confirm that KB3119142 installs repeatedly on users' computers even though the same update seems to install correctly. But in the Windows logs, the same update appears installed several times a week and every time successfully.
“This installs successfully. But I happened to see that it appeared to be updating again. I checked the update log and found that it is installing itself 4-5x a day for the last 5 or so days. If it was successful, why does it do this?” one user whose computer has been impacted by this problem explains.
More unexpected errors
What’s more surprising, however, is that some users claim that, while the update installs successfully at the first attempt, it then fails to install at every single retry.
“My error is slightly different. Windows update shows KB3119142 to have successfully installed on 13/01/2016 but that installation failed on 15/01/2016. It is not listed in Control Panel | Programs and Features | View Installed Updates. Windows update was hanging at 0% downloaded,” another user recounts this odd behavior.
Microsoft hasn’t yet acknowledged the problem despite the growing number of reports concerning this update, so for the moment, there’s no workaround that could help users prevent this from happening again in the future.
And yet, if you’ve already successfully installed KB3119142, you could hide the update in Windows Update to make sure it doesn’t try to re-install in the future.
KB3119142 is a Visual C++ update, and the aforementioned issue only affects Windows 10 devices, but we’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information on what’s happening and will update the article should we receive any answer.