Every once in a while a faulty update slips through the Redmond offices. It happened once earlier this year, and once again, one of the patches released on this month’s Patch Tuesday update cycle has caused problems for Windows 7 and Windows XP users.
According to reports, this faulty update breaks down video rendering on computers that are powered by Windows 7 and Windows XP — the screen turns black when launching specific multimedia applications.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issue, confirming that the botched update affects multimedia products like Camtasia Studio, Adobe Premiere Pro, Serif MoviePlus and YouTube Movie maker.
According to some reports YouTube video playback is also affected, along with the news that some Steam games are also failing to function correctly.
The software titan explained on its support website:
“If you use some of the following software, you may experience issues after installing 2803821.In some cases, WMV video files may fail to successfully encode or decode. Upon completion of the investigation, Microsoft will take appropriate action to help protect our customers. This may include providing mitigations and workarounds or re-releasing this security update.”
The patch, however, is still being delivered via the Windows Update feature, but Microsoft will most likely release a fix or an updated version of the patch in the next few days.
In the meantime, it is best to refrain from installing the KB2803821 update, so make sure you deselect it if you are ready to deploy July’s Patch Tuesday updates.