PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley We might be a bit busy in the next few months. Not with updates, but dealing with headlines. Why? Because AI tools are now turning to the task of reviewing a lot of code that hasn’t been looked at in a long time. First up? No, not Windows. Not Apple. […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley One of my complaints on behalf of consumers is that information about the new security certificates for Secure Boot has been vague — nearly hidden. Unless you are an AskWoody reader, you might not even be aware that there is an issue with Secure Boot certificates — not to mention […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Someone recently asked whether they could install just the security part of Apple updates and ignore all the other parts. Just as with Microsoft Windows, the ability to get just the code that pertains to security issues, without changing anything else, is no longer an option. Neither Microsoft nor Apple […]

On March 26, Microsoft released the preview update of KB5079391 (for Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2). Soon after, Microsoft pulled back and stopped it from being offered because of reported installation errors. On March 31, Microsoft released KB5086672 that — at the initial reading — gave me the impression its was only fixing issues that […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Is Microsoft finally listening? We’ve been through this rodeo before. We’ve seen vendors make changes and then pull back, only to make changes once again. So which vendor has decided to do a mea culpa and perhaps bend a bit to its customer base? Microsoft. In the recent Windows Insider […]

ISSUE 23.12 • 2026-03-23 PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Secure Boot continues to be confusing — and sometimes alarming. Nevertheless, here’s some reassurance for consumers and home users: For the most part, you can ignore all this Secure Boot patching advice. Your computer will boot if you get the update. Your computer will boot if […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley Businesses will be happy to learn that the March updates include no new zero-day bugs. A zero day is a security issue that is under active attack as of Patch Tuesday. This means that unpatched systems are potentially vulnerable. However, you know from my past patch-risk analyses that zero days […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley If you are a bit timid about February’s patches and not looking forward to installing them, I don’t blame you. The last few months have been bumpy, to say the least. But neither I nor the five Windows 11 and two Windows 10 machines at my house, the one Windows […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley From dropped products to multiple releases, January was a mess. Oops. I’m sorry. Let me try that again. Whoops. That didn’t work either. Let’s see if this other way works, shall we? These words are not what you expect from a software vendor, but during the month of January, that’s […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley The second week of January is when patching returns to business as usual. That’s generally true for patches and updates from all sources — Windows, Apple, Adobe, Google — pretty much all the majors. Patches arrive for operating systems as well as for apps and Web browsers. As usual, I’ll […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley We often think of Microsoft as one massive company that doesn’t always pull its oars in the same direction. In reality, it consists of a lot of divisions, moving in its own direction. A case in point is how Microsoft handles the end of life for Office versus the end […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley I’m giving my approval for the installation of Windows 11 25H2. Even so, consider this an “if you want to” approval, not a warning to “do it now because 24H2 is dropping out of support.” We have until October 13, 2026, to install 25H2 because that’s when 24H2 officially falls […]

ISSUE 22.45.1 • 2025-11-13 PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley This is the first month for updates from the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) plan. If you’ve signed up for the ESU, you should start seeing them as you would have seen any updates in the past. But that doesn’t mean you should install them […]

PATCH WATCH By Susan Bradley File sharing in the Windows 11 era is not easy. Microsoft has made it harder to share in a peer-to-peer network unless you have matching usernames and passwords, but recently an update layered on a new block that many users were unaware they were subject to. In Microsoft’s documentation of […]