Patch Tuesday recap: This month, an ‘Ides of March’ update?

While this month’s security updates weren’t released exactly on the Ides of March, they certainly caused disruption for many users.  (For those not into history or Shakespeare, the Ides of March — March 15, 44 BC — is famous as the day Julius Caesar was assassinated.) Microsoft’s March 9 patch release brought more bumpiness and issues than I can remember in a long time. Perhaps we should reassign the date for this year’s Ides of March to March 9 as an unofficial acknowledgment.

As I alluded to last week, this month was bumpy in terms of patching side effects. Here’s what we know: The March updates included fixes for printing that triggered blue screens of death on computers when users tried to print. In the case of Dymo label printers (and other bar code or graphical printers) they left them printing out blank labels. Larger business-style multifunction printers saw issues, especially where you have an older PCL 3 or PCL 4 style driver. Ricoh and Kyocera users reported the most issues. (One workaround: use a generic PCL 6 driver instead, though you might lose some functions.) Any Kyocera printers that use the KX driver are affected, as are some Okidata, NiceLabel, and point-of-sale system printers from applications called BarTender. 

To read this article in full, please click here