32 Windows Updates for Win 8.1 This Month

[NoelC]

Its Update Tuesday!  Woohoo, all kinds of great new features and bugfixes.

 

Okay, back to reality.

 

Specifically, 31 important updates are shown (the number may vary depending on the system), requiring a whopping 134 MB of downloads.

 

As usual, I've gone through and read about each of them.  Or at least tried.

 

Clicking the More Information or Support Information links for each update turn up...  Nothing!  Well, specifically, it said:  "Oops!  The page you are looking for may have a new location, or is no longer available."  That's some real quality documentation work there, Microsoft.  I realize I can search for KB articles individually, but that's inconvenient.

 

I've gone ahead and installed the updates on my Win 8.1 x64 Enterprise virtual machine.  It boots, no System Errors are logged, and Aero Glass still works - good signs so far.

 

Meanwhile, maybe Microsoft will actually document the updates through the normal links.  But maybe not.  They're busy revamping the Windows Update process for Win 10.  Maybe the More Information links will be broken in Win 8.1 from now on.

 

I'll be interested in hearing your experiences with this set of updates.

 

-Noel

Edited March 11, 2015 by NoelC

[JorgeA]

As I wrote over in the Windows 10 First Impressions thread, IMO this lack of timely (link to) documentation is a sign of either abysmal incompetence or supreme contempt. One way or the other, I'm afraid it suggests what the Windows Update is shaping up to be like going "forward."

 

I've only installed updates of types that seldom require reboots (i.e. for Office, but not Windows Updates).

 

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

The documentation did finally come online, though some of it is so vague as to be little better than "404".

 

I found that almost nothing I do with Windows will be directly affected by the updates.  The only one or two that gave me hope were too vague to be comforting.  Something about "improve stability".  Since my system runs all the time between updates anyway, it's not likely to be improved in any meaningful way.

 

The updates all seem to work on my VM, which is configured similarly to my host workstation.  Notably there were 32 updates for the VM, but the host says only 31 are pending.

 

Since I've heard no screams of anguish (here or elsewhere), I guess I'll apply this set and see what happens.

 

Wish me luck! 

 

-Noel

 

 

 

 

Edit:  It survived the nightly backups.  So far so good.

 

Edit 2:  Storm clouds!  Photoshop isn't starting up properly.  It doesn't seem to be able to characterize the GPU any longer.  Still investigating...

 

Edit 3:  All appears to be well with the updates.  The problem with starting Photoshop was that I hadn't waited for the system to complete verifying all its volume snapshots.

Edited March 16, 2015 by NoelC