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November update KB3097877 causing issues for some Windows 7 computers

​One of the updates that came out with November’s Patch Tuesday has been causing problems for a small sample of Windows 7 computers. KB3097877 has had two symptoms reported – Outlook crashes and the Logon issues. The logon problem prevents you from logging into the computer in normal or safe mode. The screen will show the normal “Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to login” message. Upon hitting CAD, the screen will blink an all black screen momentarily and then returns to the Logon screen with the “Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to login” message.

This has been noticed on Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit on a variety of hardware with various antivirus, policies, and other environmental factors. Windows 8 has not been observed to have the logon issues.. While the number of computers affected have been few, the impact has introduced significant delays to usability. Microsoft reissued the update part of the security patch MS15-115 with a fix the very next day, further reducing the number of computers impacted.

From the KB3097877 page​, Microsoft offers remediation of doing a System Restore to before the updates or removing the update from the command line of the system repair utility. I have had success uninstalling the update and being able to install the new revision of the update. The command differs for the update revision and 32-bit or 64-bit OS. From the System Repair utility:

dism /image:D: /remove-package /PackageName:Package_for_KB3097877~31bf3856ad364e35~x86~~6.1.1.1

See KB3097877 for more details on the update and fixes to the first bad release. Upon uninstalling the update, you may download and install the latest revision from the MS15-115 page for your corresponding operating system.