Information That May Save Someone Very Graphic Headaches

[SJesMe]

I'm not sure where this should be posted but figure this is best since it mostly affects graphics cards.

I'm hoping to save some people from the headaches I went through trying to figure out why my PC was suffering graphics card "display adapter not responding" errors, Memory Pool related BSODs and assorted other oddities that have rendered me bald (from tearing my hair out for 5 months)(!)

I won't go through the endless troubleshooting steps I took trying to figure out what in the world was going on with my brand new PC since (a) I'm a bottom-line kinda gal and (b) I hate admitting that a computer reduced me to tears more than once (I usually leave that to the guys in my life)!

Ergo, the Bottom Line: if you look in your installed updates and see KB3004394, then you (like I) have been smacked with the Badware Auto-update That Turned Evil (BATTE, as in drove me).

Feel free to read the Forbes Article I (finally) stumbled across.

Somehow or another this update got through and the purported "fix" (KB3024777) didn't ... or if it did get through, it didn't remove BATTE. I ended up going in and manually uninstalling the witch-with-a-"b" and then running the "fix" in safe mode. The "fix" btw didn't show it was running nor does it show up as installed, or even in update install history. But this is by design believe it or not. Nice M$, very nice. :sarc:

But after manually uninstalling and running the fix, KB3004394 is finally GONE.

I also then had to uninstall/reinstall my graphics driver (and to be on the safe side, a coupla other things that were wonky) et ... voila ... one whole week now (knocking on wood, crossing fingers) everything is finally behaving. YMMV

Hope this helps someone or sometwo; the only good thing about banging your head against a wall is how good life can be when you stop.

 

[GokAy]

Hmm, it has to be a bug on your side. Didn't have that problem myself, not last OS installation, nor this one (installed on 8th of April).

Glad you sorted it though.

 

[SJesMe]

Well, rather clearly, if you do a little research on the two updates mentioned, it was not just "on [my] side" as it affected tons of users ... certainly enough to warrant several write-ups and thousands of forum postings.

In any event, the original kb3004394 was pulled by MS so any recent reinstalls would not be affected. But if one hasn't done a clean reinstall since Dec. 2014, it could be worth checking ... especially if your graphics card is acting up ... but just in general since it had an adverse impact on a variety of things, including corrupting other program installations.

 

[GokAy]

You misunderstood The KB not updating with the fixed version would be the bug I mentioned.