14 DAY TRIAL // Windows updates failing to install isn’t necessarily a new thing, but Microsoft has managed to refine the experience with its patches lately, reducing the percentage of issues encountered when new updates were published.
Windows 7 users, however, probably think this isn’t true after the September fiasco when the September 11th Monthly Rollup (KB 4457144) and the September 11th Security-only update (KB 4457145) failed with error 0x8000FFFF.
In a technical analysis of the problem, Microsoft explains that the culprit was, just as we described in the article linked above, the Windows 7 SP1 servicing stack update KB3177467.
Originally released back in October 2016, this Servicing Stack Update (SSU) was mandatory to get the new patches working, and because many people skipped it, the new updates failed to install on their systems.
“Because it was not categorized as a security fix; however, many organizations missed the update and decided to install only the default monthly security fixes instead of the full servicing stack update,” Microsoft engineer John Wilcox, explains.
SSU mandatory
Technically, a correct patching cycle involves deploying the SSU first and only then the September update, which guarantees that all the prerequisites are met.
To make sure that similar issues aren’t experienced in the future, Microsoft plans to make changes to the SSU next month and flag it as a critical security patch.
“To ensure our customers do not encounter this specific situation again, going forward, if we release a new servicing stack update, it will be marked as “security,” not just “critical,” so that it is included by those customers who are installing only tagged security fixes,” Wilcox further adds.
As to why the bug wasn’t spotted before the public release of the patches and why Microsoft wasn’t offering the SSU automatically to all systems, it’s because the testing has been performed on up-to-date machines where this update was already installed.
If your system has previously encountered the same issue and installing the latest updates failed with error 0x8000FFFF, make sure that you first install the Windows 7 SP1 servicing stack update KB3177467.
Via Neowin