KB3000850 - BIG update - Windows 8.1.2?

[jaclaz]

If you're at all serious about that comment, ...

Naah, of course I was kidding, only to highlight how we are very far from AI (Artificial Intelligence) but we are well into PAI (Pretended Artificial Intelligence), which is what I call *any* program that pretends to be smarter than the user is, depriving him/her of some degree of freedom.

I mean, what I have noted lately is that Anti Viruses (not necesarily Avast, but I would say *all* "mainstream" AV's) are getting increasingly more "pervasive" and often deleting, preventing access or "quarantine" perfectly harmless things (false positives) but, much more than that doing it in a "silent" (I would rather call it "sneaky") way, creating havoc without any warning.

I mean there are two ways to recognize a virus:

• known signature
• supercalifragilistic heuristics

In my perverted mind, the "known signature" should be divided in two "classes":

1. really known and unique signature match
2. possible signature match

giving them "different dignity", whilst the first one may be allowed to delete/quarantine/etc. silently, the latter should ask the user about what to do, and as well the heuristic engine detections which have an even higher probability to get a false positive should be subject to manual user confirmation, or anyway allow the user to set the thingy "automagic" or "requiring manual review".

 

jaclaz

[youravinalarrrf]

 

repair Windows with an Inplace upgrade and now install the Rollup.

 

 

Having looked into doing this I don't believe this is even possible due to lack of free space on my small 64GB SSD.

 

From what I've read elsewhere http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/26095-repair-install-windows-8-a.html you need at least 8.87 GB + what is currently being used of free space on the hard drive/partition that Windows 8 is installed on to be able to do it.

 

My Windows folder alone is now 34.4GB so even if I moved all my installed programs, program data, users to another drive it would still not be possible to do it and that would sort of defeat the object of having an SSD in the first place. As it stands I'm in a continual fight for free space having only ~10-12GB free (the page file, Music, Documents, Pictures & Videos have already been moved to other drives and system protection has been turned off).

 

In my case the Update History clearly shows this update as being successfully installed on 12 separate occasions (with Failed showing 3 times) but it just does not show up in the Installed Updates section at all.

 

Do you think it's worth having a look at the link NoelC posted above re resetting Windows Update components?

Edited November 24, 2014 by youravinalarrrf

[NoelC]

Big SSDs don't cost much any more...

 

Example, Crucial MX100 - 128 GB for $59.99 US.

 

How much is your time worth?

 

-Noel

[MagicAndre1981]

Essentially none of my applications are functional, getting the following error message.

"This application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxtrace.exe tool for more detail

 

 

This is likely caused by a missing C++ Runtime. Run the Command prompt (cmd.exe) with admin rights and run this command:

 

SxsTrace Trace -logfile:SxsTrace.etl

Now run the programm which causes the SideBySide error.

Go back to the command prompt press ENTER to generate the SxsTrace.etl. Now type this:

 

sxstrace Parse -logfile:SxSTrace.etl -outfile:SxSTrace.txt

Now open the SxSTrace.txt trace and look which VC++ runtime is missing.

If you are unsure, please upload the complete SxSTrace.txt and post a link here.

 

[NoelC]

• supercalifragilistic heuristics

 

LOL, you sure do have your finger on the pulse of today's high tech.

 

Remember when "heuristics" was a bad thing?

 

-Noel

[jaclaz]

Remember when "heuristics" was a bad thing?

 

Sure ,  roughly at the same time I thought supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a really cool word.

 

And this shows, besides how old I am, how there are still chances for old words to surface back (since the marketing already used ALL more common adjectives/synonyms of exceptional or smart) .

 

jaclaz

[MSD]

Essentially none of my applications are functional, getting the following error message.

"This application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxtrace.exe tool for more detail

This is likely caused by a missing C++ Runtime. Run the Command prompt (cmd.exe) with admin rights and run this command:

SxsTrace Trace -logfile:SxsTrace.etl

Now run the programm which causes the SideBySide error.

Go back to the command prompt press ENTER to generate the SxsTrace.etl. Now type this:

sxstrace Parse -logfile:SxSTrace.etl -outfile:SxSTrace.txt

Now open the SxSTrace.txt trace and look which VC++ runtime is missing.

If you are unsure, please upload the complete SxSTrace.txt and post a link here.

Michael Davis shared "sxstrace": https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=7E15730111693D6E!4610&authkey=!AA2O-bRDtmcWqBY&ithint=onenote%2c

Hopefully this links functional. Its easy to take a desktop browser for granted until it's gone. Can't work out a lot from the sxstrace myself :/

[MSD]

Without the update installed, does your system pass a check using the following?

SFC /VERIFYONLY

I ran across this page, published by Microsoft, which describes ways to reset your Windows Update components, and provides a Microsoft Fixit troubleshooter.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058?wa=wsignin1.0

I realize that in your case the update has been applied without error and the problem is in running the system afterward, so I don't know if it's directly applicable. But it at least gives you an inroad to start troubleshooting problems with your servicing database.

-Noel

Passed SFC without the update installed. Reinstalled the update and failed. The log should be in the notebook I linked above.

[MagicAndre1981]

 

Michael Davis shared "sxstrace": https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=7E15730111693D6E!4610&authkey=!AA2O-bRDtmcWqBY&ithint=onenote%2c

 

 

ok, looks like a manifest file is corrupted:

 

 

INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.i..utomation.proxystub_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.9600.17415_none_04f07ffa8e8d29fd.manifest. 

INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is (null).

 

 

run the already posted DISM command to repair the file.

[osRe]

I have been using Avast since around 2005.  Back then one NEEDED a 3rd party AV solution, and they were one of the first who really embraced 64 bit computing.

The previous AV software I was okay with before Win8's Defender was McAfee's VirusScan 4. It worked liked I wanted: Scan on demand, background scanning that can be enabled/disabled completely and doesn't monitor anything but file access, manual updating. While I did try a few AV software after that, they were all increasingly too much of a hassle and I just switched to using VirusTotal.com on suspect files, and maybe some SandBoxie use.

While it's a pity Defender doesn't have proper context menu integration, nor interesting stats while scanning, for most part I find its background scanning between harmless to bearable, with some exceptions. And it can be disabled (not completely straightforward but not too bad), or at least it seems that way. And then, there's the advantage of it being an integral part of Windows, so no compatibility problems expected.

Edited November 27, 2014 by shae

[MSD]

 

 

 

Michael Davis shared "sxstrace": https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=7E15730111693D6E!4610&authkey=!AA2O-bRDtmcWqBY&ithint=onenote%2c

 

ok, looks like a manifest file is corrupted:

 

 

INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\manifests\x86_microsoft.windows.i..utomation.proxystub_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.9600.17415_none_04f07ffa8e8d29fd.manifest. 

INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is (null).

 

 

run the already posted DISM command to repair the file.

 

After letting it do its thing for a couple of hours, everything appears to be running. Thanks Muchly!

[MagicAndre1981]

You're welcome. Enjoy your 8.1 again.

[osRe]

BTW, 775MB?! Any idea why?

Briefly reading the KB article, it doesn't seem to add anything useful.

[NoelC]

My understanding is that this update is a full "roll-up" similar to the Spring Update, in which whole bunches of bugfixes and miscellaneous things that have gone into the code base are all built into a whole new system.  Basically, by Microsoft's own admission, it's a "Service Pack" without any version change.

 

By the way, since ditching Avast, all the latest updates have been working great for me.  Almost 2 weeks of hard use with zero glitches.  I recommend going ahead with the update if you're not running Avast.  If you are, make sure you have the latest software from Avast first, as they claim to have fixed the incompatibility.

 

-Noel

[jaclaz]

Basically, by Microsoft's own admission, it's a "Service Pack" without any version change.

Which, additionally and still by MS own admission is "optional" and, that by quickly reading the list of "features" a "largely NOT *needed* one".

 

Of course,  if you are actually into "clustered virtual machine mission-critical environments" you wouldn't probably be using Windows 8.1

 

The lack of "anything useful" that shae highlighted seems like accurate .

 

jaclaz