KB 2670838 - The EVIL UPDATE

[astroshed at gmail.com]

On Saturday, 14 March 2015 02:36:01 UTC+10, David H. Lipman  wrote:
> 
> 
> > KB 2670838 - The EVIL UPDATE
>  
>  
> < snip >
> 
>  
> > GOODBYE,
> >   FAILURE TO DO SO PUTS YOUR SYSTEMS AT RISK !
> > 
> > 
> > Bye,
> >   Skybuck. 
> 
> I hope you like the taste of shoe leather.
> 
> KB2670838 ==> 2013 !
> 
> It was not a part of the March '15 Patch tuesday release.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dave
> Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
> http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

Maybe so, but this EVIL update continues to wreak havoc. It's completely screwed my development environment 3 times since it was released. The first time, it's evilness was unknown and it took me down for weeks. Complete Windows reinstall didn't even work as it would just be installed again with the same result. 

The second time was a year later later after a system image restore and the latest was June 2015 after another recovery from the same system image.

Because the recovery image doesn't have the update installed, Windows merrily goes ahead and installs it immediately after recovery and takes down Visual Studio. No amount of logging/debugging will help. This update does something that can only be remedied by uninstalling it.

I'm onto it now, but the first time it happened I was ready to go all United States Postal Service on Microsoft. ha!