Management Brilliance Microsoft Suggests to Customers, “You Did It!”

November 21, 2024

dino orangeNo smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.

I read an amusing write up called “Microsoft Says Unexpected Windows Server 2025 Automatic Upgrades Were Due to Faulty Third-Party Tools.” I love a management action which points the fingers at “you” — Partners, customers, and anyone other than the raucous Redmond-ians.

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Good enough, MidJourney. Good enough.

The write up says that Microsoft says:

“Some devices upgraded automatically to Windows Server 2025 (KB5044284). This was observed in environments that use third-party products to manage the update of clients and servers,” Microsoft explained. “Please verify whether third-party update software in your environment is configured not to deploy feature updates. This scenario has been mitigated.”

The article then provides a translation of Microsoftese:

In other words, it’s not Microsoft – it’s you. The company also added the update had the “DeploymentAction=OptionalInstallation” tag, which patch management tools should read as being an optional, rather than recommended update.

Several observations:

  1. Pointing fingers works in some circumstances. Kindergarten type interactions feature the tactic.
  2. The problems of updates seem to be standard operating procedure.
  3. Bad actors love these types of reports because anecdotes about glitches and flaws say, “Come on in, folks.”

Is this a management strategy or an indicator of other issues?

Stephen E Arnold, November 21, 2024

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