Broke 0.4 Vistas Walked back well documented Feb 15, 2020 their #59 worst broke on record

Shipped Tuesday, pulled Friday

KB4524244 pulled from Windows Update after four days of freezes

↳ caused by KB4524244 ↗

One of only 20 things they have ever fully walked back.

The market's verdict: -3.7% on MSFT in the week after.

Status: Walked back. Who could have seen this coming?

What actually happened

A standalone security update shipped on February 11, 2020 caused freezes, boot failures and installation errors, and by February 15 Microsoft had pulled it from Windows Update entirely, one of the faster retirements in Patch Tuesday history. The fixes were folded into the March cumulative updates, which at least meant customers only had to trust the same pipeline twice in a row. Four days from release to retraction is a sprint record the quality team presumably does not frame.

This one is well documented.

Were you affected? Unbreak it

Uninstall the update if it landed ↗

wusa /uninstall /kb:4524244 /quiet /norestart

Timeline