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Home - General / All posts - Window 7 post-SP1 "convenience rollup"
tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#19-May-16 22:27

This is pretty big news for everyone still using Window 7--or rather still (re)installing Windows 7 on one or more machines from time to time.

A bit under the radar (at least my radar), so here's a link to Peter Bright's post at Ars Technica, the TechNet announcement he points to, and KB3125574.

Better late than never! How many petajoules of human energy and petafreuds of angst would have been saved if this had been done, say, 3 years ago? God bless whoever it was who managed to pull Microsoft's ego in just enough to get this done.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#20-May-16 02:22

A bit of a warning, though.

I rolled back to a safe SP1 image and installed this rollup today, on one machine. (Not on my main work machine, no way, what are you even asking me? So, yes.)

The update worked fine. First reboot also fine. At second reboot, at BIOS stage, a red text box:

Secure Boot Violation

The system found unauthorized changes on the firmware, operating system or UEFI drivers.

Press [OK] to run the next boot device, or enter directly to BIOS setup if there are no other boot devices installed.

Go to BIOS Steup > Advanced > Boot and change the current boot device into other secured boot devices.

This is on an ASUS motherboard. It might be different on others. Hardly anyone has an ASUS motherboard.

I needed to disable Secure Boot to get to, um, boot.

Go Microsoft!

I can see why this is not called a Service Pack. (Those guys were sacked.) It's just for Convenience.

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#20-May-16 02:34

In Victorian English, "convenience rollup" would have meant "toilet paper".

So far I'm clocking up several kilofreuds, nothing serious.

Anyway I'm trying again and will report on the fallout.

rk
621 post(s)
#20-May-16 07:27

In Victorian English, "convenience rollup" would have meant "toilet paper".

dale

630 post(s)
#20-May-16 10:28

I trust that you have submitted your new unit of measure to tech?

I'd like to be able to select freuds as a unit of processing wait time...

tjhb
10,094 post(s)
#21-May-16 00:00

There's nothing wrong with the rollup, but it exposes a misconfiguration (arguably) in the default BIOS settings for ASUS motherboards. Perhaps other manufacturers as well.

Since Windows 7 does not support or use Secure Boot, it should (arguably) not be enabled at BIOS level when Windows 7 is in use. (Only Windows 8 and later support Secure Boot at OS level.)

Why is the problem only exposed by this update?

I think (surmise) that's because ASUS includes certain important Windows 7 RTM and SP1 drivers in its default Secure Boot database. So if Secure Boot is on, it allows Windows 7 to boot.

But at least one patch included in the convenience rollup changes at least one of these drivers. In particular, KB3133977, which updates tpm.sys (among other files). Just installing KB3133977 on its own provokes the same issue.

The ASUS Secure Boot database does not recognise one or more of the updated drivers, and prevents boot.

See:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3133977

https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1016356

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824987.aspx

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3065487/microsoft-windows/recommended-kb-3133977-patch-can-cause-asus-pcs-to-freeze.html

tl;dr: Before installing the convenience update for Windows 7 SP1, ensure that Secure Boot is disabled in your system BIOS.

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