The quality control crisis at Microsoft is unsustainable. The company canceled Patch Tuesday in February, leaving users without protection for two months and exposed to a 0-day. Last week the new Windows 10 hotfix, KB4013429, arrived, and by what we observed on some forums, another delay would have been preferable. Errors in System Restore, rendering problems on Internet Explorer 11, Windows DVD Player that won't open, and a very long wait during installation turned KB4013429 into a nightmare.
The Creators Update is just around the corner. "April" is all we can get out of Microsoft these days, and we won't deny there's activity. More than ten builds have been circulating in recent weeks, split between desktop and Windows 10 Mobile versions. But the errors in hotfixes for stable Windows 10 installations remain stuck like stakes. Add the automatic and mandatory profile of updates, and the result is a significant number of users venting their frustrations on the web. The latest headache is KB4013429. My main terminal received it on the day of its launch, Patch Tuesday, March 14, and although it didn't cause problems, it did take a long time to install.
Unfortunately, many people had worse luck. Some of the things KB4013429 broke after installation are System Restore, Windows DVD Player (and other players that depend on Microsoft's MPEG-2 codec), and Internet Explorer 11 with rendering errors in Dynamics CRM 2011. With seven days' lead time, anyone would think Redmond had plenty of time to sort this out, but all we've seen here is an out-of-band hotfix, KB4015438, that corrects the problem in Windows DVD Player and a deadlock condition in Switch Embedded Teaming. There's no data on System Restore or the CRM situation.
The most popular workaround for KB4013429 problems was, before the new hotfix, to download a copy and proceed with its manual installation, but now it's suggested to do the same with KB4015438 (if you didn't receive it via Windows Update) and wait. I wouldn't be surprised to see another loose patch in the coming hours, and if the panorama is so complicated, I think the best will be to stay away from the Creators Update for a couple of weeks.
