We’ve had lots of interesting comments about our article Screwed If You Do, Screwed If You Don’t – Windows Update Causes Crashes (KB891711), which talks about an update to Windows released early this year which seems to be causing more problems than it’s fixing.
Here are some of the comments:
“For any one having any issues with the above windows update, here is a temp fix until Microsoft gets around to fixing it right. Go to misconfig, and uncheck the update KB891711 listed in the startup list. It sure has been working for me for the last few months on all the ME machines I have been working with. It also kills Sygate firewall which I use a lot in my reformats.” – mdn7779
“I just got around to patching an “oldâ€? 98SE computer and it gave me Black Screens Of Death about every 2 seconds… thank you for the tip with msconfig… I will have to try that… and I’d say that M$ does everything to discourage the use of older OS… whether the puter can take XP or not doesn’t make any difference, now, does it? :-S” – Brigitte
“Nice to know I’m not the only one whose computer didn’t like this “update. My older version of Zone Alarm had trouble with it. Updated to a more recent version, and that seemed to solve that problem. I didn’t realize that the other problems shared the same cause. Before reading this column, I thought all the BSODs were a message from my machine that it was time (after almost 4 years) to reformat c: and reinstall Windows. What a relief. BTW, MS config isn’t the only tool out there for controling startups. I personally prefer one that is built in to Spybot S&D, for example.” – Ken
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
“I too get the blue death screen and already unchecked it in startup at msconfig. It took awhile to find out what was causing my windows ME to crash. I will be looking for the fix.” – Josephine Bralley
“When I downloaded this update, I immediately began having problems. Internet Explorer refused to start, the blue screen of death, etc. I simply went to AddRemove Programs and removed KB891711. Microsoft and some others might shake their finger at me, but to heck with it; anything that causes system instablities isn’t staying on my machine.” – echo
“My problems from this don’t seem to be as bad as some, but I am having a lot of freezes in IE and have so far had one shut down freeze. I also wonder if it is the cause of the MS icon that appears on my desktop sometimes when I close a program – either OE or IE, not sure which. When opened in Wordpad, it only shows hieroglyphics.” – Carol
The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.
CashApp us
Venmo us
Paypal us
Re the Kb891711 problem from Microsoft Update: thanks for being here. I was just getting ready to reload Windows 98SE, preparing by closing running processes with Task Manager, and noticed that I had a process that I didn’t recognize – Kb891711.
With Kb891711 running, I couldn’t get onto the Internet with Firefox, Mozilla or Explorer, and couldn’t update my anti-virus program. I couldn’t get into recently created folders with Windows Explorer, and couldn’t open anything related to DOS (either frontends or my elderly PIM). The machine crashed constantly (after the crashes, when Norton Disk Doctor ran automatically, it identified the problem as lying with the same file, tvDebug.log, every time).
With your advice, I solved the problem using msconfig. Figured that if I uninstalled Kb891711, Windows would just re-install it with the next update.
I was able to find this site using the Linux side of my computer, which is unaffected by Windows problems. I don’t think I’m going to buy any more Windows operating systems. Linux software is improving rapidly, it’s mostly compatible with Windows, and the Windows situation just keeps getting worse and worse. A security update that works like a virus, and that can’t be tracked down except by dumb luck, is really discouraging.
I have been fighting this PROBLEM for awhile and would keep restoring the config, updating and loading the problem all over again. Finally got so fed up that I went into MSCONFIG and unchecked everything that wasn’t critical and brought everything back online a little at a time. Anyone want to guess what the problem was? MICROSOFT and their freaking update.
Thanks for letting me vent…..