KB 3097877 Causes Crashes, Hangs & Various Other Problems for Windows 7 Users

Update – Microsoft has released an official fix for the bugs caused by the KB3097877 update, so go ahead and have a look to see of you’re still experiencing issues. 

This week we reported about the Patch Tuesday for November, and the many fixes that it brought. But, as it’s almost always the case, it did manage to product some botched update, as well. This time, it seems that update file KB 3097877 is causing the most of the issues.

According to multiple reports, quite a dozen of them, I might say, MS15-115 KB 3097877 is causing various problems, such as Outlook crashes, network sign-in black screens, disappearance of Windows 7 sidebar and gadgets, Asus Audio Center issues and more.

As we speak, Microsoft hasn’t acknowledged any problems in KB 3097877, and it seem that the single solutions to fix them consist in uninstalling the patches or rolling back to an earlier system restore point.

Outlook problems caused by KB 3097877

It seems that Outlook was the most affected product of them all. Here are just a couple of annoying problems reported by Window users:

Since loading the Office 2010 automatic update last night, Outlook crashes. At first, it crashed when I clicked to expand the main screen or an email to full screen. Now, it opens, but before it completes startup, it shuts down. “Microsoft Outlook has stopped working” screen pops up. Then It closes and I get a screen that says, “A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.”

Many say that Outlook won’t even start after the 11/11/2015 security updates. But what seems to be the biggest problem are the crashes:

After installing Windows updates last night/this morning, my Outlook 2010 (running on Windows 7) crashes after I click on different messages in my Inbox (gmail account). Is anyone aware of possible conflicts that may have been included in the November 10, 2015 update for Windows?

Just this morning, after several updates last night, Amazon, Best Buy, and other assorted senders crash outlook when pictures are downloaded. Disabled all Add ins. My temporary workaround is to empty the trusted senders list and just not download pictures. Very confusing as it just started for no apparent reason (maybe one of the MS updates?

I recently was affected by the problem with Windows Update KB3097877 crashing my Outlook. Before I discovered that uninstalling that update would solve my problem I went through many of Microsoft’s fix options, including Online repair (which looked like at least a partial reinstall)

Windows 7 problems caused by KB 3097877

Windows 7 users are also apparently affected by KB 3097877, and various problems have been reported. Here’s what we have been able to found from the support forums:

I have Windows 7 running and now after booting when I enter the homescreen you can pick the user on which you want to log on. So I try my own user and then it should “load” to the point where it will ask for your password of the user.

Others have been reporting that they can not log into Windows 7 after the November 2015 updates.

We just ran the latest windows 7 updates on multiple windows 7 professional 64bit computers. Once the update runs, the machine boots to the ctrl-alt-del screen for login. If you hit ctrl-alt-del, a black screen appears. Then after a few seconds (5-30) it bounces back to the login screen but it is entirely blue – no option or login. Each time you ctrl-alt-del, you get the black screen then back to blue.

A couple of other users report issues with the screen flicker, as well, allegedly caused by a Wacom driver:

Update KB 3097877 on Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit makes the login screen flicker and login is not possible. Most probably caused in connection with Wacom Cintiq 13 HD tablet, driver 6.3.15-1

Other issues

Other Windows 7 users report that Internet Explorer crashes when you try to download pictures in an email. There even are problems reported with Excel, as well:

I believe the most recent November 2015 Tuesday update contained an update for Excel (I use 2010). After the updates installed I have a series of 3 or 4 important spreadsheets that all start to open than immediately crash and close Excel. Excel reports it can’t find a resolution. These spreadsheets have opened fine for years and other than making some daily changes to figures in the spreadsheet nothing new added. There are no macros running in these sheets.

Thus, long story short, there are many, many issued caused by this specific update, so please use the comments section to let us know how have you been affected.