Today is Microsoft Tuesday --- the
SECOND Tuesday of the month --- on which Microsoft is expected to release its monthly cycle of Windows security updates. Based on previous history, they should become available at 1 P.M. [USA - Eastern STANDARD Time]
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Please use Windows/Automatic Updates to determine which updates are applicable to your particular system.
Just to add that I have religiously used and run MSRT, from both WU and from the standalone download site, since its inception years ago. It has never detected anything on any of my systems. I never bothered to use the /N switch, and never regretted this practice.
Tonight for the first time I ran a full on-demand MSRT scan, which took a few hours. The only thing it detected was a trace remnant of an EICAR test file.
Pale Moon has been updated to version 28.2.0, a major development release addressing performance, web compatibility, bugfixes, regressions and security vulnerabilities.
Fixed a rare crash on local networks with HTTP basic auth and unsupported cipher suites.
Fixed a performance/timer issue when leaving the browser idle.
Fixed an issue causing an empty dialog when launching executable files from the browser.
Fixed an issue preventing making entries to disallow sites to store data for off-line use.
Removed code to prevent extensions with binary components.
Fixed an issue with common dialogs being sized incorrectly for their content.
Fixed an issue with event handling on the tab bar that would cause frustrating behavior when trying to open/close tabs in rapid succession.
Switched default behavior for scrolling when a context or pop-up menu is open to allow scrolling, like in v27. This also affects scrolling in very long menus, e.g. bookmarks.
Added experimental Asynchronous Panning and Zooming (APZ) for desktop use.
Re-enabled the use and parsing of ICC v4 color profiles.
Removed telemetry code from the caching subsystem.
Improved full-screen detection for suppressing status messages.
Made all arguments passed to Init*Event() optional except the first for parity with other browsers.
Cleaned up some internal installer code.
Fixed making caret width configurable when dealing with CJK characters (regression).
Fixed drawing of table borders consistently when zooming a page (regression).
Exposed the "Save download location per site" pref in about:config.
Improved media handling (ongoing).
Added experimental support for AV1 in WebM videos (disabled by default). Note: this is for WebM only for now, so MP4 and MSE AV1 streams (e.g. YouTube) will not (yet) play.
Removed the (defunct and incomplete) in-browser translation code.
Fixed an issue with CSS Grid layouts unnecessarily shrinking element blocks.
Fixed notification settings menu entry (opes about:permissions with relevant data now).
Fixed the launching of an undesirable background content process for capturing page thumbnails.
Fixed a focus issue in the bookmark properties dialog.
Changed the setting for reporting CSS errors to the console to false by default, to prevent unnecessary performance loss for recording this data.
Added control mechanisms for Opportunistic Encryption (both for alternative services and upgrade-insecure-requests) in preferences, and disabled this by default due to potential security and privacy issues with this transitional technology.
Updated the default reported Firefox version in Firefox Compatibility Mode to prevent "too old Firefox" complaints on websites.
Updated libnestegg, ffvpx, reader view components and several other modules from upstream.
Implemented security fixes for CVE-2018-12381, CVE-2017-7797, a better fix for CVE-2018-12386 (DiD), CVE-2018-12401 (DiD), CVE-2018-12398, CVE-2018-12392, several Skia bugs, and several crashes and memory safety hazards that do not have a CVE number.
WARNING: The link for this separate download of the MSRT is now pre-checking a box to also download "MSN default homepage & Bing default search engine". Be sure to uncheck this, unless you really want it!
Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT, MRT) for November, version 5.66
Reminder: Users who are paranoid about the remote possibility of a FP can opt to run this tool from a Command Prompt, appending a /N parameter [for "detect only" mode].
When I clicked the button to download/install today's updates for Win 7 Pro+SP1, 32-bit, I got a box saying:
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - November 2018 (KB890830) Prerelease Version of Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Home, Media Center, or Tablet PC Edition END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PRERELEASE CODE...(followed by whole lot of legalese about ...installing one copy solely to test the Software internally, test the compatibility of your application or other product(s) that operate in conjunction with the Software, and to evaluate the Software for the purpose of providing feedback thereon to Microsoft....)
Say what?? What does Windows XP have to do this? I had XP Pro+SP3 on this PC years ago but legally upgraded it to Win 7 Pro that was installed on a brand new HDD, so why does MS think I'd be interested in anything related to XP now??
I canceled that update, but what am I missing about this?? :TongueTied:
No idea what's happening there. XP should be "dead" at this point... at least, in terms of any support... so I can't imagine there being a "Pre-release" of anything XP-based. Indeed, as you noted, XP had a SP 3... so why would there be a pre-release now of SP 2 ????
I download/run the M(S)RT from the direct link (rather than through Windows Updates), since I like to append the /N parameter on the command line.
@ky331Thanks for the quick response. I decided to cancel all today's updates and closed WU. I then went back and had WU search for updates again, and it offered MSRT again along with the others.
When I clicked the update button, I got the same EULA box again so it obviously wasn't just a one-time oopsy on Microsoft's server. But why would they be offered a "prerelease" version of anything via WU, and for XP makes absolutely zero sense ? (I saved the EULA (14 pages!) to a pdf and took a screen shot of the WU page to document what I experienced.)
And I just posted over in the MS forum so I'll update this thread if I hear anything "official" from Redmond.
joe53
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Posted November 15th, 2018 23:00
Just to add that I have religiously used and run MSRT, from both WU and from the standalone download site, since its inception years ago. It has never detected anything on any of my systems. I never bothered to use the /N switch, and never regretted this practice.
Tonight for the first time I ran a full on-demand MSRT scan, which took a few hours. The only thing it detected was a trace remnant of an EICAR test file.
Just an FYI. As always, YMMV.