Monday 22 May 2017

Ah, windows updates and human factors

After the WannaCry debacle I thought I'd best check that J's old HP laptop that used to be used for work was fully patched.

It's been used infrequently over the last year or so, so I thought it might be missing some important updates.

I wasn't seriously worried about WannaCry as it had never run SMB services and was turned off during the rampage, but it's stupid not to patch machines after an incident like that.

Well when I checked it I discovered human factors had been at work here - it was set to check for updates at 0300, but J always left her laptop switched off overnight, so consequently it had never, ever checked for updates. Definitely an Edvard Munch moment!

On top of that windows update was knackered such that it just flailed and looped when I ran it manually.

Reading the KnowledgeBase articles it could either be that the update servers had moved, or that the download directory was corrupt. Either ways, running the trouble shooting tool and swearing under my breath seemed to fix that.

So, three quarters of a gigabyte later we're patched.

The only major irritant is that as windows update was knackered we've also missed out on the free upgrade to Windows 10 despite creating a reservation ...