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Microsoft Reissues Outlook Patch After Reported User Crashes
Microsoft rereleased a security update for Microsoft Outlook after users reported bugs after installing, including system crashes.
Security update KB3097877, which was originally released with Microsoft's monthly security patch on Tuesday, was part of "critical" bulletin MS15-115 and aimed at addressing issues in all supported versions of Windows that could lead to remote code execution attacks through compromised fonts embedded in malicious Web sites.
Shortly after release, many users started complaining that Outlook (specifically Outlook 2010 and 2013) was running into problems when encountering HTML-embedded messages. One user found the root of the issue and alerted users on a TechNet forum.
"KB3097877 causes numerous problems in Outlook 2010/2013, it can also cause crashes in Excel and PowerPoint," wrote user TrulyVexed. "Removing KB3097877 alone fixes the issue. Microsoft has rereleased an updated hotfix so if the update is dated 12/11/2015 you shouldn't experience these problems. It would have been nice if they'd appended -v2 to the hotfix so people can easily identify it but such is life."
Microsoft clarified that the problems appears to only affect Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users and, those running Windows 8.1, 10 or any other Windows Server version do not need to download the update. For those affected users with automatic update enable, the rereleased security fix should have already been downloaded. Microsoft acknowledges that the patch may have to be manually removed if the system keeps crashing prior to the new update being downloaded and installed. Instructions on how to remove it and where to download the updated security fix can be found here.