No, the exploit was accidentally published by a third-party before MS had a chance to fix it. This is on those guys.
Because they saw a fix for a separate older print spooler vulnerability so they thought it had already been patched, lol
Oops. Skimmed to quickly, but still a big oops with n the 3rd party mess up.
The emergency patch doesn’t fully fix the issue, but it does offer some protection as now require Admin credentials if the attackers attempt to install drivers. Imagine a fixed patch will show up next week for Patch Tuesday.
I believe it also disables the ability to install non-signed printer drivers.
Yeah we’re in a half state. We’re applying the patch to some systems, disabling those services where not needed, and monitoring some systems until which time we can apply one of those other two methods.
The issue is this patch seems to require a reboot on nearly every OS version we’ve put it on and we’re attempting to go outside patch cycle to request an outage window for those reboots.
Aleck
4807
I have a somewhat unusual Windows 10 question.
For no reason I could figure out, my desktop just stopped booting this afternoon. The error indicated there was something wrong with the BCD (missing BCD, error 0xc0000098 alternating occasionally with a required device isn’t connected, error xc00000e). I googled about and found this is typically because the BCD has somehow gotten corrupted. I brought out the trusty windows 10 installer USB drive and tried startup repair with no dice, then went down a bit of a rabbit hole and created a WinPE boot drive. Booting from that drive, I mounted the hidden system partition and used bcdboot to copy a new BCD over.
Worked like a charm except the new BCD didn’t overwrite the old BCD. Now I get a screen asking which operating system I want to boot into, and it lists two versions of Windows 10. The default one is the new, functional version, while the second listing gets me right back to the BCD error/device missing error.
I’ve figured out I can hide that menu and Windows will boot like a charm, so this might well fall into the “just ignore it” category going forward. However, I’m a little concerned that the non-functional BCD could pose an issue at some point in the future. Does anyone have recommendations for deleting a BCD (or BCD entry, or whatever the appropriate term is)?
rei
4808
Use BCDEdit or Visual BCD Editor:
Aleck
4809
Appears to have worked like a charm – thanks!
So I setup a new laptop for my Mom yesterday. This morning she called and couldn’t get into the laptop due to the initial Windows login not accepting her password. She has a list of un/pw and I used a pw from that list just to get the laptop setup. Except the password I thought I used won’t work and none of the others that I might have used seem to work. My googling is inconclusive as to the best way to get into the laptop or reset the password. My pref is something I can talk her thru over the phone. I recall doing the silly ‘3 security questions’ thing which I assume was for the Win10 login as I don’t think I setup any other accounts. But I can’t see where she can his ‘reset’ password for those security questions to even come into play.
Does she have an MS/Live account?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/help-with-the-microsoft-account-recovery-form-b19c02d1-a782-dee6-93c3-dc8113b20c42
Also, recommend you set up MS Authenticator on your mom’s phone and tie it to her account. It makes logging in to any MS account easy as hell. It just sends a request to the phone and you approve it. No password or 2FA entering required.
She has a office 365 account from the university she used to work at. And still uses their email as her primary email. I assume that is the only MS login I used to set her stuff up yesterday and the only MS account she has at all. I’m also pretty sure that is the password I used for her laptop login during the initial setup.
Finally got her to the ‘reset password’ screen where you enter answers to your 3 questions. But then when she tries to create a new password it continually tells here the ‘passwords don’t match’. Even when I had her try just a simple 1234 as the password so that there wouldn’t be any typos.
I assume we’re missing something obvious, but I did find one thread about this exact problem but it had no solution. Ugh.
HRose
4813
Fun quirks of a superbly written OS:
I just wish someone collected all of these, it’s like going on a treasure hunt.
There are probably thousands of other things that changed between restarts, changing settings, and different applications running. “Windows tips uses 2 Gigs!” is in no way the correct takeaway message here.
rei
4815
That tweet made me dumber.
HRose
4816
I’ve verified this myself.
Fresh boot, 3Gb occupied. Unchecked the thing, rebooted, 2.5Gb occupied.
So it’s not huge, but that’s still 1/6 spared on Microsoft’s shit.
The fact this probably has huge differences from user to user is another reason why this OS is a mess, no one really knows what it does, and it wastes a lot of resources doing stuff that you aren’t asking it to do.
Soma
4817
Isn’t this the MO of a desktop OS like Windows 10? It runs so many things in the background that you don’t need because it is on AC, and just in the once-in-a-blue-moon chance that you need it. When it is on battery it still does so many things you don’t need and ended up as a battery hog.
I am always amazed that Windows 10 will check for and download updates whenever it is on internet, whether it is draining valuable battery or not. There is no option to force it to wait until it is plugged in. Even Android can give you that option but nooooo, MS says windows updates are so important they can’t wait.
You can just turn on Metered Internet, and then it will give you much more control about downloading updates.
Considering that last big flaw, being forced to download updates does not feel like the worst thing ever.
As for reduction of ram usage, I figure shutting down your computer everyone once in a while probably reduces usage, simple because it shuts down what every programs you turned on, but forgot to turn off.
Soma
4819
Thanks I’ll give it a try to see if it improves battery on the road. Really it is such a convoluted way to set something that is so obvious (whenever not on AC, do the least to conserve battery). That battery slider on system tray should have done it, whenever it is set to be most battery conserving.
It certainly would be a good change.
