Pyramix not booting - "windows will advise a solution"

[draudio2u]

Hi,
Windows 7 Pro 64bit, running PMX 11.0.6. his machine was running Pyramix fine just two weeks ago, but now will not boot. A window pops up stating "Program has stopped working, Windows will advise if a solution to the problem becomes available" I have restored the system back two dates (to April 3), and it works.
Question: anyone know what updates came down the lines in the past ten days that could have caused this?

Thank you.

[fl]

Microsoft's attempts to mitigate the Meltdown and Spectre exploits have resulted in a series of Windows updates (starting in January of this year) filled with problems, and actually making the vulnerability worse. Symptoms of a patched system are a proclivity to experience memory leaks, and network connection loss, either of which Pyramix would find upsetting. It's possible that your machine installed the April updates without your knowing it, and that these introduced the problems you encountered.

Might I suggest that you check the AskWoody.com website from time to time to see the current state of things regarding updating and maintaining a Windows 7 installation.

As tempting as it is to blame Microsoft for everything wrong in the world, sometimes Pyramix installations go sour, and a quick recourse is to run the Pyramix installer again, but this time it will come up with a "Repair" option, which will reinstall all the necessary files over top of any which may have become corrupted. That's a quicker fix than reinstalling your whole system from a backup image, and avoids the problems associated with software and plug-ins registrations being lost in the process.

[Graemme]

Of course, you could just turn off 'automatic updates' and save your self many, many headaches. I run Windows 7-64-bit and have no such issues. I only do updates when I have the time to lose several hours of my life...in other words, only when I really need to.

[charlienyc]

I just ran windows updates (happens twice annually at most) and now have lost function of my Ravenna cards: "network cable unplugged". Any ideas what the culprit is? Running the Pyramix installer in 'repair' mode on one machine did not fix the network card.
I was planning on updating these systems to v11 this week anyway, but would like to save some configs first.

Update: Windows restore saved my butt on my main machine. The backup rig is now happily running V11. I guess this is another lesson: If you must run updates, set a restore point first!

[mpdonahue]

Charlie,
;I just went though this brain damage myself.
You need to stop using the "Rollup" and switch to Security only updates.
I long ago stopped using the regular windows update and started using WSUS Offline.
Once you do this, you will still need to remove a bunch of individual updates. It is listed on the confluence page.
https://confluence.merging.com/pages/vi ... d=25755762

All the best,
-mark

[Larry Elliott]

Thanks for the link Mark. Most helpful

[fl]

Most of the issues with network cards ceasing to function came with the March 2018 updates from Microsoft. They have acknowledged that there is an issue (which persists), but have not provided information as to which cards from which vendors are affected. There are some indications as to which specific updates caused the issues.

For an overview of the state of things, take a look at Woody Leonhard's article at https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... rsist.html