Microsoft released a Critical Update on Tuesday along with the rest of its regularly scheduled patches, and it seems that there is a serious problem with it. In the past 2 days, we have had numerous calls from our clients reporting that Outlook is crashing, and at least one case where a computer with a touchscreen will no longer even boot up.
The update is KB-3097877, and if it has been automatically installed on your Windows system, we strongly recommend that you remove it immediately, even if you don’t use Microsoft Outlook. It has been reported that this update not only causes Outlook to crash frequently and randomly (especially when the Reading Pane is turned on), but has also cause issues such as a black screen during boot up or when a user tries to log into a system with this update.
To uninstall this update, open up Control Panel and click on Programs and Features, then click on “View Installed Updates” in the upper left-hand corner:
You should then be able to scroll down through the list of installed updates to the Windows Updates section and find it near the top, which should list them with the most recent updates first. Locate the one that says “KB-3097877” at the end and then right-click on it and choose “Uninstall”. You will be prompted to reboot your computer, which you need to do in order to finish uninstalling this update.
The update was supposedly released to address issues with the way that Windows handles fonts, but apparently something went awry. In the wake of that, we are receiving a growing number of phone calls and e-mails from people who are having problems with Outlook crashing, starting yesterday.
For more information on this particular update and the problems that it has been causing, this is a good article from InfoWorld: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004519/microsoft-windows/kb-3097877crashes-outlook-causes-network-sign-in-black-screens.html. This posting from Silicon Angle is also very informative: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/11/12/microsofts-patch-tuesday-update-is-killing-outlook/
In light of the thousands of patches that Microsoft releases every year, it is inevitable that every now and then one will make it through the system that does more harm than good. We will do out best to keep you posted whenever this happens and offer advice on how to deal with the situation. If you are unable to uninstall this update or to get your computer to boot up because of it, please contact PJ Networks so that we can give you some assistance.
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Happy computing! Let’s be careful out there.
-Your PJ Networks Team
