Latest updates issued by Microsoft for Windows 7 and Windows 8 cause Blue Screens of Death™

The latest updates/fixes issued by Microsoft have resulted in bizarre results for the Windows 7 and Windows 8 users.  Microsoft had released a total of 4 patches namely KB2982791, KB2970228, KB2975719 and KB2975331 for all users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 Pro excluding Home Basic and Starter editions. The users who downloaded these patches complained getting the dreaded Blue Screens of Death™ 

The fixes which were issued on Tuesday were supposed to address privilege escalation bugs but an apparent font cache clearing issue lead to Windows users getting the dreaded blue screen.  The bad patch triggered crashes with a "x50 Stop error message (bugcheck)" after any of four updates (KB2982791 KB2970228 KB2975719 or KB2975331) were installed.

The Microsoft Community forum was filled with user queries asking Microsoft engineers for a remedy for the sudden crash caused due to the updates.  At the time of writing of this article the forum had already added 43 pages of complaints from users.

Microsoft has urged users to remove a update and reboot the machine even as it has removed the download links to the offending patch after reports emerged it caused the dreaded blue screen of death.  In addition it has also removed two more patches which were to problems with the incorrect location of fonts that couldn't be changed and rendering issues. Altogether three updates were pulled for download from the Microsoft website.

You can check if you have installed the said patches on your machines with the PowerShell scripts written by Edward Langley of US consultancy Business Intelligence Goals.  You can also read the Microsoft FAQ page regarding any queries about the update.