Dave-H

Has anyone managed to get Java 8 Update 161 to install from the installers on XP? I've never had any problems before, but now the offline and online installers just run and then close, without apparently doing anything. There's no error messages, and nothing in the system logs about it. Has XP finally been blocked or is this perhaps to do with the latest MS Windows Updates (I hope not!)?

OK, I've tried formatting the USB stick as NTFS, and I'm now also getting the error message if I try to copy a file to it. Frankly I don't think I'm going to lose any sleep over this as long as that's the only problem caused by the NTFS.SYS update. I can't see that I would ever need the stick formatted to anything other than FAT32, which seems to work fine.

The only options I'm being offered to format my USB stick are FAT32 or exFAT. I don't see any reason to format it to NTFS, which I assume I could perhaps do with Windows 10? The only reason to do that as far as I can see would be if I needed to put a file on it that was bigger than 4GB, and I can't see that ever happening!

I've tested with a FAT32 formatted 16GB USB stick on my main machine, copying and pasting files to and from it and deleting files from it, and no apparent problems. This is the machine where the OS is running on a FAT32 drive however. I will try with my other machine where the OS is running on an NTFS drive later.

But if I have successfully installed KB4056615 on both of my machines, and neither of them is now showing any ill-effects, why uninstall it? Surely if it's (apparently at least) doing no harm, it's still better to have it than not to have it?

I've had no problems like that thank goodness (touch wood!) My main machine is running XP on a FAT32 drive, not an NTFS drive, so this may be hiding any potential permissions or ownership problems, but having said that, my netbook is running XP on an NTFS drive, and that isn't showing any issues either. Maybe I've just been lucky!

Just as a matter of interest, as there was apparently no update for IE8 this month, did the machines that didn't offer the three Office updates find their updates very quickly, or did they still scan for hours, which appears to be normal now if any IE8 or Office updates are outstanding?

So are you saying that MS tested what the effect of this Windows/Microsoft Update "adjustment" would be on XP machines pretending to be POSReady/WEPOS machines, six months before XP came out of support?! That would imply that they knew people would be able to carry on getting updates with a simple registry tweak, and took steps to make it as awkward as possible for them! Surely MS couldn't have been that devious.....could they?!

I don't think anyone really knows why there is such a problem with some updates on WEPOS machines now using the online update system. It certainly did work fine for ages on modified XP machines. I think the problem suddenly started happening a year or two ago, for no apparent reason. There was a theory that it was solely because of the Office updates, which are not actually supported on POSReady machines, but the IE8 updates are causing the same problem and they surely are supported, so that can't be the whole answer! I do wonder if this is happening with "real" POSReady installations. I would imagine that many machines with embedded Windows run 24/7 unattended, and are set to update automatically if internet connected. I can just imagine them running for days on end looking for updates! It has to be a bug somewhere in the update system, but whether MS now have any interest in fixing it seems unlikely as far as we're concerned with our hacked machines!

If you have the same Office configuration as me, you should now have installed KB4056941, KB4056615, KB4011201 (for Office Suites), KB4011607 (Office Compatibility Pack), and KB4011605 (Office Compatibility Pack). There are also three .NET security updates, KB4054173 (.NET 4.0), KB4055229 (.NET 3.0), and KB4054178 (.NET 2.0). If you haven't got those installed, your system will probably still try to find them, assuming you have those .NET versions installed of course. If your CPU usage is still high that will probably be the reason. Personally I switched off automatic updates as soon as I started using the POSReady hack, as I didn't want to risk any possibly incompatible updates downloading and installing without my knowledge.

Yes, one of my machines needed the switch to get a full install, the other one didn't. Strangely it was the relatively basic single processor machine that needed the switch, not the more complex dual processor one!

My friend's PC has an AMD Athlon II P320 processor. The registry key is present, and I assume it was added by Norton 360. No BSODs (touch wood!)

Perhaps the furore around Meltdown and Spectre made them look more closely at related things generally, and they found a whole nest of security bugs that hadn't been addressed before! As an off-topic aside again, I applied the Patch Tuesday updates to a friend's Windows 7 machine this morning, and for the first time ever, although it prompted for a reboot as usual, there was no "installing updates, don't switch off your computer" progress prompt either before shutdown or after reboot as there normally is. That was very strange, but I don't know if it's significant. It does say that all the updates installed successfully.

So what exactly was it for then? Surely you don't release an out of sequence update to fundamental system files which haven't been updated for ten years, like ntfs.sys, unless there's a very critical reason for doing so!

Still way off-topic, but in case anyone was wondering about the non-updating of my Windows 8.1 installation, I read that MS are not rolling out the patch for Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1 for normal installations until the normal Patch Tuesday (tomorrow). Only those on the WSUS channel will get it now. I'm not quite sure that I believe that as a friend's Windows 7 machine was offered the update, several days ago, and he certainly isn't on the WSUS channel! All a bit strange, but as there was still no sign of the update from Windows Update on my machine I downloaded and applied the KB4056898 patch manually to my Windows 8.1 installation today anyway, with no apparent ill effects. Strangely I could find no mention of this in the Windows 8/8.1 forum here.

That's good to hear @SD73! As far as I'm concerned, if Microsoft Update says that there are no patches needing to be installed, I've always been happy with that, even though the yellow shield still sometimes sticks in the system tray. I've had that happen many times before, and usually the shield eventually goes away. This time I eventually tried installing the patch again from the yellow shield, but it just went through the motions very quickly, I don't think it actually did anything, and then it disappeared, for good I hope until the next lot of updates, which I assume are still expected in a couple of days time.

Thanks, but I already managed to fully install the patch as I detailed earlier. I am an administrator on the machine anyway, and it still didn't fully install because of some OEM incompatibility which I had to over-ride to get all the files replaced.

@glnz NTKRPAMP.EXE and NTKRNLMP.EXE aren't in \System32 on my system either, so I assume that's normal. @SD73 It could be my internet security software stopping the update (Trend), but the same security software (albeit an earlier version) is independently installed on the XP side of the machine, and that didn't stop it being offered there. Mind you, the registry key isn't there either on XP! Anyway, I thought that adding the registry key manually, if your internet security software vendor didn't do it for you, should over-ride that and allow WU to offer it anyway. Trend have said they will not be adding the key for people, but their software is compatible and they've given instructions on how to add it yourself. This does not seem to be happening however, which is a bit puzzling.

Well the XP side of my netbook still seems to be OK, thank goodness. I'm still puzzled as to why before the over-ride switch was added the patch didn't update two files in the \System32 folder, but did update the equivalents in the \DLLCache folder. That makes no sense at all to me! Just another very quick query, which is of course completely off-topic here. The 8.1 side of my netbook is stubbornly refusing to detect that it needs the update, despite me adding the necessary registry key which should allow Windows Update to offer it. I've scanned several times manually, and it still obstinately says "no updates available". Anyone any quick suggestions as to why that might be? Thanks, Dave.

Hi, back again! I tried running the KB4056615 installer using the /overwriteoem switch, and this time it updated all the files correctly. No adverse effects noticed so far, touch wood! I've still got a yellow shield in the system tray telling me it needs to be installed, but a scan on MS Update now comes up clean, so I'm assuming the shield will eventually go away. It does stick around for a while sometimes on some updates anyway. I'm not sure whether reading recent post that the update was necessary for me anyway. My main machine is X5460 Xeons, and the netbook is an Atom N2800.

@dencorso @cdob Thanks guys, but the problem is not with my dual processor machine, which updated fine, it's with my netbook, which is a pretty basic single processor machine.

Yep, that's exactly what's in the log! Will try using the over-ride switch later. I do have an ISO backup!

NTKRNLPA.EXE is the problem. If I just manually substitute NTOSKRNL.EXE the system still boots fine. I will do a grab of my Device Manager and check the log later on. At first glance i don't think my problem machine has much in common with SD73's!

Same for me. I tried using the standalone installer, same result, and again in Safe Mode, same result. I then tried the nuclear option of booting into Windows 8.1 (it's a dual boot machine) and manually substituting NTKRNLPA.EXE and NTOSKRNL.EXE in the \System32 folder with the (later) versions in the \DLLCache folder. The result of that was that the machine wouldn't boot at all, just hanging on a black screen! Don't know what to try next.

@SD73 I've just checked and I now know why KB4056615 is repeatedly installing. Whatever the system says, it hasn't actually installed completely! NTKRNLPA.EXE in my \System32 folder is still version 5.1.2600.7259, and so is NTOSKRNL.EXE. The versions in the \DLLCache folder are correct, and all the other files are correct everywhere. I'm going to try the standalone installer, and if that doesn't work either, I'll try in Safe Mode. I guess the files aren't being replaced because of some access problem.