Patch Tuesday - Has It Been Abandoned? KB2998527 KB3001554

Has Microsoft abandoned Patch Tuesday? There are certainly no articles announcing it that I can find, yet they've just released two new Windows Updates in the past two weeks. The first update was KB2998527, a patch that adds support for a time zone change taking place in Russia on October 26th. That could have easily waited for an October 7th release. The patch from today, KB3001554, "improve[s] customer experiences in DVD playback in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1)."

Neither of these updates require the user to restart, so it's not an interruption unless you're compelled to restart after every update like me. Still, this is very odd behavior for Microsoft. What's the deal?

I have KB3001554 listed in Windows Updates to be installed.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3001554

Sure it's nice they are continuing to support Win7. Although, it's a curious phrasing I've seen with other vendors, too. "improve[s] customer experiences" in some contexts means the application will send back usage information when it is used. Some people would like to opt out of that sort of thing.

Perhaps more appropriate is has anyone seen a problem after installing this? I see a report at Help nothing working right today - World Golf Tour that a person's application changed how it worked and made the application mostly unusable. I think the person had on automatic updates. They said once they uninstalled KB3001554, their application worked the way it was intended.

I keep automatic updates OFF and install after giving a little bit of time to see if people report problems and if I should be concerned about their reports. The reports can be related to something not applicable to me, a very rare situation that no one else reports, or a user problem. But I like to wait a little bit on some of these. Recently, it paid off; I think that was August's Patch Tuesday fiasco.

MSWin7User said:

Sure it's nice they are continuing to support Win7. Although, it's a curious phrasing I've seen with other vendors, too. "improve[s] customer experiences" in some contexts means the application will send back usage information when it is used. Some people would like to opt out of that sort of thing.

Perhaps more appropriate is has anyone seen a problem after installing this? I see a report at Help nothing working right today - World Golf Tour that a person's application changed how it worked and made the application mostly unusable. I think the person had on automatic updates. They said once they uninstalled KB3001554, their application worked the way it was intended.

I keep automatic updates OFF and install after giving a little bit of time to see if people report problems and if I should be concerned about their reports. The reports can be related to something not applicable to me, a very rare situation that no one else reports, or a user problem. But I like to wait a little bit on some of these. Recently, it paid off; I think that was August's Patch Tuesday fiasco.

I installed the update this morning, and when I got home this afternoon, I found that two programs I have set to launch on startup (Avire Free Antivirus and Packard Bell's Hotkey Utility) either started slowly or didn't start at all. After restarting three times and still having this problem, I did a system restore and the problem stopped. I'll keep an eye out to see if anyone else has a problem before trying it again, or just leaving it.

ThisIsMadness91 said:

MSWin7User said:

Sure it's nice they are continuing to support Win7. Although, it's a curious phrasing I've seen with other vendors, too. "improve[s] customer experiences" in some contexts means the application will send back usage information when it is used. Some people would like to opt out of that sort of thing.

Perhaps more appropriate is has anyone seen a problem after installing this? I see a report at Help nothing working right today - World Golf Tour that a person's application changed how it worked and made the application mostly unusable. I think the person had on automatic updates. They said once they uninstalled KB3001554, their application worked the way it was intended.

I keep automatic updates OFF and install after giving a little bit of time to see if people report problems and if I should be concerned about their reports. The reports can be related to something not applicable to me, a very rare situation that no one else reports, or a user problem. But I like to wait a little bit on some of these. Recently, it paid off; I think that was August's Patch Tuesday fiasco.

I installed the update this morning, and when I got home this afternoon, I found that two programs I have set to launch on startup (Avire Free Antivirus and Packard Bell's Hotkey Utility) either started slowly or didn't start at all. After restarting three times and still having this problem, I did a system restore and the problem stopped. I'll keep an eye out to see if anyone else has a problem before trying it again, or just leaving it.

Why didn't you just uninstall KB3001554 first and see if the problem went away, instead of doing a system restore... which is a way more PITA move than simply just uninstall the update imo.

I haven't seen any problem yet, can play music on the HDD, video on the HDD and a movie DVD.