Microsoft plans monster Patch Tuesday next week

Patch Tuesday October 2009

[bill]

Microsoft plans monster Patch Tuesday next week [computerworld.com]

Microsoft today said it will deliver its largest-ever number of security updates on Tuesday to fix flaws in every version of Windows, as well as Internet Explorer (IE), Office, SQL Server, important developer tools and the enterprise-grade Forefront Security client software.

Among the updates will be the first for the final, or release to manufacturing, code of Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system.

The company will ship a total of 13 updates next week, eight of them pegged "critical," the highest threat ranking in its four-step scoring system, beating the previous record of 12 updates shipped in February 2007 and again in October 2008.

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for October 2009 [microsoft.com]

[lexipixel]

The Microsoft link (at bottom of post) returns a page with the heading:

We are sorry, the page you requested cannot be found.

[bill]

The links in my post? They both work for me.

---

It's late Tuesday afternoon in Japan, but I don't see any updates yet. ;)

[lexipixel]

It's coming up now.

[Dabrowski]

It's worrying that they're still having security issues with SMB, FTP and even the kernel. These have been part of the Windows OS for 15 years!

[Robert Charlton]

The links in my post? They both work for me.

I'd seen the link problem too. For a while both your bottom link and the "advance notification" link in the article gave a Microsoft error page. The current MS page is dated "October 13, 2009", whereas both the article and your post are dated Oct 8, so it's possible that MS updated the page and that the url was down during the changeover.

Incidentally, has anyone with XP installed the updates and "beta" tested them for us? I'm a reluctant updater, as some folks here may know. ;)

[bill]

links

That's understandable. A lot of those MS announcements are subject to change. They should settle down a bit now. ;)

I just installed 15 critical updates to Vista. The system seems stable so far. I'll update some of my XP machines and see how they fare.

[Dabrowski]

I just installed 15 critical updates to Vista. The system seems stable so far

Stable Vista.

It's a new oxymoron!

[bill]

All kidding aside my Vista install has been more stable than any previous version of Windows I've ever used, and I've used most of them. YMMV.

My XP updates have been trouble free as well. No issues to report from my machines. Same with Windows 2003 and Windows 7. So far, so good.

[Robert Charlton]

My XP updates have been trouble free as well. No issues to report from my machines.

:)

Thanks, bill. It's good to get a reassuring word on these. Trouble-free on my machine so far too.

My approach on installing these, for what it's worth, is to use the notify me and I'll download when I choose approach. I then use the Express Install for critical updates when I know I'm not about to turn off my machine. I'll then often go back and see if there are any other less critical updates I also want to install.

[bill]

That's a good strategy Robert. It's not a bad idea to let others be the guinea pigs for these patches. You'll hear about problems fairly quickly from the people who have automatic updates turned on. You'll need to be more vigilant and keep up with the news though. There have been some patches that were for zero-day exploits recently. I tend to install those immediately.