It’s been a lovely day, thanks largely in part to Microsoft Patch Tuesday. As you may know, Microsoft releases Operating System and Software patches for installation on Tuesday and many computers automatically apply these patches to computers early Wednesday morning. As this is generally a common practice and will keep your computer safe from malicious software, every once in a while, we see a patch that tends to make things worse than better. It’s been a long time, but today was an banner day for Microsoft.

The release of the Update KB3097877 yesterday has caused numerous computers using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and higher to crash when one opens or views an email with HTML graphics. These kinds of emails are usually the ones you get as newsletters that look more like a web page than an email. However, even someone with a graphic in their email signature can cause the anomaly to occur. As soon as one of these emails is opened, Outlook will go into “Not Responding” mode and will often crash with a small dialog box saying the program caused a problem and was closed.

Reports have also shown this update will cause some business computers to not be able to sign in to their desktop at all, giving them a black screen after they try to log in. Other odd results are symptoms like Windows Gadgets not working.

The only fix is to remove the update. Here’s how:

Open up Control Panel

Go to Programs and Features (or Uninstall a Program)

Click on “View Installed Updates” in the navigation panel on the upper left

Look for the update with KB3097877

Right-click.

Uninstall.

For our managed customers, we have preemptively removed this update from any installed computer and have prevented its further installation until Microsoft releases a version of this update that doesn’t hurt their own products.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have need help.