“We are looking into reports from some customers who are experiencing difficulties with Outlook after installing Windows KB 3097877. An immediate review is under way,” a Microsoft spokesperson told the press

MS15-115 is one to miss

The problems were first brought to light by The Register, which says the issue has to do with the Windows KB 3097877 patch that was issued in yesterday’s Patch Tuesday fixes – officially known as the MS15-115 update.

Windows KB 3097877 was designed to fix a problem with the way in which Windows handles fonts, but numerous customers have reported problems with Outlook after installing the update.

“Today I’ve deployed latest Outlook patch to all of my clients, and now Outlook is crashing every 10 minutes and then restarting itself. I tried on fresh Win10, no AV with latest patches applied and here we go, Outlook crashing there too,” wrote one user on the TechNet forums.

According to The Register, the problem crops up whenever users open and begin scrolling through an email that uses certain kinds of incompatible fonts. The issue is said to affect Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 on all variants of Windows, but can thankfully can be fixed by uninstalling the patch.

Reddit has also been bombarded with customer complaints about the patch. Many posters there recommend disabling the patch on Windows Server Update Services and waiting for Microsoft to fix it

A2Z Computing have already seen dozons of machings coming in with faults, each one has been fixed and we also now offering remote fixes.

8am 12th URGENT fix..

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004441/microsoft-windows/microsoft-surreptitiously-reissues-botched-patch-kb-3097877-for-windows-7.html

Thursday, Nov. 12, Microsoft re-released KB 3097877 — the horribly messed-up security patch I talked about yesterday that freezes Outlook, blocks network logons, crashes the Asus DX Xonar driver, and kills Win7 sidebar gadgets and SolidWorks, among others.

The patch is part of security bulletin MS15-115, a “critical update,” in Microsoft’s lexicon, designed to prevent remote code execution triggered by malicious fonts. Yes, fonts.

It’s also not clear why Microsoft re-released the patch with the same KB number as the bad patch. That’s going to make life difficult for some admins. For those who hang their tails out in the breeze and turn on Windows Automatic Update, though, it means that a run through Windows Update will solve the old problems, and you’re not likely to notice that anything’s been updated.

If you can get to Windows Update.

New version NEARLY solves all the problems.