KB2926765 Bad May Update on Windows 7 leaves system unusable.

I service PCs in Pinellas County Florida and have experienced this twice in the last week. On the first one, System Restore quit working even on boot tapping F8 and “Repair My Computer”. I reloaded Windows 7 and all Windows Updates went in fine.
Nothing new yet accept with a clean install of Windows 7 avoided the issue. And Flash 13 was installed prior to installing KB2926765. Customer still reports no issues.
The second one is here now and by the same trial-and-error process found KB2926765 as the culprit. I uninstalled the update and hid it.
Both computers installed KB2926765 after I performed a tune-up that removed a large number of spyware & malware infections, toolbars and suspect folders throughout the system. (ie. Conduit, WhiteSmoke, MapGalaxy, toolbars & folders)
My observations show the KB2926765 update is only a problem in a previously infected system. I believe the infection removal process or a damaged file left unrepaired by the infection removal is at the root.
I however wanted to look into the firewall concerns/issues MTS52 mentioned above. So I reset the Windows Firewall, manually downloaded & installed update KB2926765. I had the same issue. I could not access the firewall to see if shell32.dll was being blocked. Not convinced this has been resolved.
I again uninstalled & hid the update.

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with this KB.

In this post, NoelDP suggested using an offline scanner to check for infections.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/13-antiv...t-rescue-disk/
Have you tried one or two of those?

Windows May 2014 Patch Tuesday has also created problems with my system - they all appear to be security related - is KB 2926765 the only culprit or are there other updates that are causing problems. System restore did not resolve the probblems on my PC and in desperation I did a clean install, which cured everything until the May 2014 Patch Tuesday updates started to installed whendown came the system again. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough to switch of the auto update before installing updates individually. I am running Win 7 x64 SP1 on a Sony VAIO - symptoms are:

1) updates repeatedly disable the Tcp/IP NetBios Helper service causing the system to fail to recognise my NAS drive - enabling this service cured the problem;

2) Recent files have all disappeared from the Start Menu - this appears to be caused by a change to the privacy settings as the Privacy options relating to recent files in the start menu properties are greyed out (see attached);

3) Outlook 2007 now continually shows a UAC message every time it starts, even if UAC is set to the lowest security setting (not advisable) - other programs that never had a problem also show this behaviour - the problem has not occurred with my Windows Vista laptop;

4) Outlook 2007 refuses to open PST files either from the File / Open menu / Outlook Data File option or via the Tools / Account Settings / Data Files / Open Folder route - the problem has not occurred with my Windows Vista laptop;

5) Chrome now refuses to load a URL directly from an email - the top bar shows blue rather than the normal default grey and the program just hangs.

Does anybody have any solutions to any of these problems: either by uninstalling the responsible updates and / or resetting the appropriate registry entries?

Other than the multitude of complaints from users Microsoft appears to be totally silent on the havoc they have unleashed on the customers - does anybody know if the are doing anything to solve this problem as I can find nothing on their websites?

May 2014 Patch Tuesday updates have also created havoc on my Win7 x64 SP1 Home Premium installed on a VAIO All-in-one

PC - in view of the errors I am seeing I presume that the offending updates are supposed to fix security issues. A system restore to before the updates did not undo the problems and caused other instabilities in programs Restore indicated might not work properly after the restore.

In desperation I did a clean install - this worked fine until the May Patch Tuesday updates started to install and I was back to square one (I stupidly forgot to turn off auto install).

Symptoms are:

1) Updates repeated disabled the Tcp/IP NetBIOS Helper service - as a result Windows did no recognised my NAS drive

which was no longer listed under Network in Windows Explorer or as Mapped drives. Enabling the service reconnected

the NAS drive. Several other network related services are disabled (Net.Msmq Listener Adapter / Net.Pipe Listener Adapter / Net.Tcp Listener Adapter / Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service), but since I don't know what these do I have left them disabled - should these be auto enabled / manual start / disabled?

2) I now get repeated UAC messages when I start several programs that previously behaved, in particular Outlook 2007 even if the UAC security setting is set to its lowest (not advised) security setting. While this is irritating it I can live with it, but Outlook 2007 now also will fails to open PST files from my archive either via File / Open or Tools / Account routes.

3) The recent files all disappeared from the start menu and since then none of the programs I have run is listed - when I looked at the start menu properties the 'Store and displacy recently opened programs in the start menu is greyed out as is the box to change the number of programs to be displayed despite the 'recent items' box selected (see attached).

4) Takes ages to connect to the LAN and WAN on start up.

Does anybody know which of the updates is causing these problems and / or fixes either in the services or registry that can solve them? is there a list published by Microsoft of the Patch Tuesday updates?

It is clear from forums and blogs that the May Patch Tuesday have created havoc across the board with Win7 & WIn8 (my laptop running Vista was unaffected after the updates), although the problems caused appear to differ from user to user and while there are losts of posts on the problems I've not seen any solutions - removal of K2926765 suggested in the posts above did not improve the problems. What is also clear is that Microsoft is completely silent on the mess they have caused - I can find nothing on their websites relating to any of the issues / problems arising from the May Patch Tuesday. Does anybody know what they are doing?

Did your clean install include wiping all of the partitions (including hidden partitions) on every hard drive in such a way as to ensure that no root kits survived? Did you use a few offline scanners?

edit: I'll answer your possibly rhetorical question, "Does anybody know what they are doing?" with a question of my own: How would we know what MS is doing?

exspextations said:

PC - in view of the errors I am seeing I presume that the offending updates are supposed to fix security issues. A system restore to before the updates did not undo the problems and caused other instabilities in programs Restore indicated might not work properly after the restore.

In desperation I did a clean install - this worked fine until the May Patch Tuesday updates started to install and I was back to square one (I stupidly forgot to turn off auto install).

System Restore is NOT a complete "copy" of the [C] partition.
A System Backup Image IS a complete "copy" of the [C] partition.
System Backup Images are more reliable than Restore Points and can save a LOT of time and frustration.

You can use both, and if System Restore doesn't work, then you can restore a Backup Image.

If you're interested, here's a couple of threads by whs worth looking at ...
Imaging strategies
Image your system with free Macrium

hth,
David

Thanks for those that responded to my post.

I realise that a restore is not a compete copy and that a System Backup is a better option, but in view of the age of my System Backup I felt that a clean install was probably worth the extra effort.

On the issue of maleware / root kits: While I did not do a wipe of all my partitions - I had data I needed to protect on one of the partitions - I had run my normal security programs (PC Cleaner / RegisteryBooster / CCleaner / McAfee Internet Security Suite) as well as a number of online tools (Kaspersky / House Call / McAfee / Bitdefender antivirus tools - nothing identified and several root kits tools Microsoft Security Scanner / Mcafee RootKit defender / GMER / Kaspersky TDSSKiller - also nothing identified - the only thing that showed up after repeating these scans today was that Kaspersky TDSSKiller finds 12 'other issues', but none of the buttons to show these does anything so I don't know what it found.

As the problems occurred on both occasions immediately after rebooting from MS updates I can only conclude that one or more of the updates is causing the problem (unless maleware / rootkit / virus infection piggy-backed on the MS updates).

If I ever get mys sytem back up and running I'll make more regular System Backups.

Some infections (even some very old ones like Alureon) load before the Windows OS does. When a security scanning tool asks the Windows OS for the info needed to determine the health of a file, the infection causes Windows to lie to the security app. There are ways to detect some of those lies, but offline scanners do not have to worry about most of those lies because the infection is not active.

>(PC Cleaner / RegisteryBooster / CCleaner / McAfee Internet Security Suite)
Out of that list, only CCleaner has a good reputation around here and some don't suggest/use the registry cleaning part of that tool. You should see no performance gains by removing stuff from the registry.

I do IT support and have a laptop in that all desktop shortcuts don't work and all exe files won't run. The customer indicated to me that a few months ago he had a problem, brought it to someone, and they seemed to fix it.

I got into repair system and did a system restore and brought it back before KB2926765 was installed. Everything came back except the libraries in Windows Explorer wouldn't work. Ran scans with MalewareBytes, Avast, and MRT but nothing really showed up. Marked the update as hidden and kissed it up as a bad update.

Then looked at the libraries and tried a few suggestions on this forum but none seemed to work. I created a new Windows user to see if it was limited to the user profile. When I went into that user not only the libraries didn't work but all shortcuts and exe files wouldn't run. Back to the original user an all except the libraries were OK

Now I look at file type associations. I found Default File Type Associations - Restore and followed their instructions for shortcuts, exe files, and library files. All worked in both IDs. I created a 3rd ID and everything was fine. I turned off the hide on the questionable Windows update, downloaded and installed and everything was fine.

I can only assume that the previous work done on the system removed the virus but the master file type association table was damaged and not fixed. This Windows update for some reason accessed that table and trashed the users