Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Windows 7 Update Breaks VMware Connection

Microsoft’s latest patch Tuesday fixes somehow managed to break the connection for many users using VMware to run Windows 7 in a virtual enviornment.
VMware is used by a lot of people to run Windows 7 in a virtual environment, be it on a computer or a server. Many people are on the fence as to whether or not they should adopt this virtualization technique in the workplace. This recent issue with a Windows update isn’t boding well for it.
According to the VMware knowledge base there had been a conflict with two security bulletins issued for Windows 7, causing disruptions for VMware’s View Client and creating connection failures for users attempting to access the View Client Server.
VMware then investigated the issue further and found that two Microsoft patches 2482017 (a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer), and 2467023 (an update to address an issue with the handling of system binaries in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 systems) were responsible for the connection issues.
Microsoft released both of these updates as part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday last week, and the problem affects both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of  Windows 7 running VMware View.
In fairness to VMware this wasn’t there fault, but regardless they got straight onto the issue and posted an advisory on its site to let users get over this issue.
  • Users who have already installed the patches can either upgrade to VMware View Client build 353760, or they can uninstall the two Microsoft patches (probably not a good idea, though, since the patches fix a security vulnerability).
  • And VMware also recommended that if the newest Microsoft security updates had not yet been installed, users should download and install the View Client patch before updating their Windows 7 machines with Microsoft’s security fixes.
VMware say they’ve been closely working with Microsoft since Windows 7 has been released to ensure that no issues like this occur. However according to Pat Lee, director of clients and end-user computing at VMware, this update included features of Windows 7 Service Pack 1 which wasn’t due to be released until February 22nd and that’s what caused the issue.

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