Since last week's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has been receiving reports of serious bugs from those who installed the updates. In response, the company has removed the download links for the updates from download channels and is offering advice on how to remove them.
The most serious case appears to be MS14-045 (a vulnerability in Kernel-Mode Drivers that could allow elevation of privilege). The security advisory recommends that users uninstall this update immediately.
Microsoft is also reporting issues with three other updates that it has removed from download channels, along with instructions for uninstalling them. Two of these updates are non-security updates. The third is a re-release of an update (“Revision: 7.0”), an older update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2.
An article in the company's Knowledge Base describes these issues (KB2982791) and includes instructions for uninstalling them. We're listing the first 3 because they're the most serious:
- Known issue 3: Microsoft is investigating behavior in which systems may crash with a 0x50 Stop error message (bugcheck) after any of the following updates are installed:
- 2982791 MS14-045: Description of the security update for kernel-mode drivers: August 12, 2014
- 2970228 Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows
- 2975719 August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2
- 2975331 August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2012
This condition may be persistent and may prevent the system from starting correctly.
- Known issue 1: After you install this security update, fonts that are installed in a location other than the default fonts directory (%windir%\fonts\) cannot be changed when they are loaded into any active session. Attempts to change, replace, or delete these fonts will be blocked, and a “File in use” message will be presented.
- Known issue 2: Microsoft is investigating behavior in which fonts do not render correctly after any of the updates listed above for known issue 3 are installed.
