Microsoft tells Windows 10 users to uninstall Office

Microsoft today took the unusual step of telling users running Windows 10’s Technical Preview to uninstall Office before applying one of December’s security updates.

“We just made a tough call after working through the night that I thought I should share with you,” wrote Gabe Aul, the engineering general manager for Microsoft’s operating system group, in a four-part Twitter understatement Tuesday.

“We have a security update going out today, and the installer fails on 9879 if Office is installed,” Aul continued. “Rather than rolling a new fix (losing several days in the process) we’re going to publish it as is. The workaround is painful: uninstall Office, install the hotfix, reinstall Office. Sorry. We’re working hard to fix.”

Aul’s mention of “9879” referred to the latest “build” of the preview; Microsoft issued Build 9879 four weeks ago.

Somewhat later, Aul identified the update as KB3022827, the Knowledge Base identifier displayed in Windows Update on the preview. (Computerworld was unable to find an associated page on Microsoft’s support site that matched KB3022827.) He also partly retracted his advice to uninstall Office: “Please try to install KB3022827 before the workaround to uninstall Office first. It will work for many, no harm if not,” he tweeted.

Several people chimed in on Aul’s Twitter feed to say that they had tried the update before uninstalling Office and had no problems.

According to Microsoft, only one of today’s seven security updates was to be applied to Windows 10’s preview. That update, pegged as MS14-080, patched 14 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE) 11, the browser bundled with the OS.

Read more: CiteWorld