Update KB3185279 for Windows 8.1 brings 14 bug fixes, download it now

Microsoft recently pushed a series of updates for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, breaking the regular Patch Tuesday pattern. The cumulative updates rolled out to Windows 10 are actually re-released versions of the initial Patch Tuesday updates that users couldn’t install due to various install issues.

On the other hand, the cumulative update KB3185279 for Windows 8.1 is a brand new update package that brings an impressive number of 14 fixes and improvements for various OS issues.

The KB3185279 update addresses Windows Explorer issues, virtual private network bugs, USB storage device authorization problems, and more. The update is also available for Windows Server 2012 R2.

KB3185279 includes the following improvements:

1. “Addressed issue that causes some USB storage devices to lose authorization when the device goes into the lowest power state, requiring user to re-authenticate using PIN.
2. Addressed issue that causes Windows Explorer to become unresponsive when sharing a folder that is the child of at least two shared parent folders.
3. Addressed issue with Storage Spaces log truncation which resulted in data loss and errors when reading records.
4. Addressed issue that causes Wildcard CNAME queries with Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) enabled to not return Next Secure (NSEC) records.
5. Addressed issue that occurs with any MPIO attached SAN disk when multiple paths fail over concurrently or in quick succession, the I/O operation may fail, and the computer may lose its connection to the storage device.
6. Addressed issue that causes wbengine.exe to fail while running Windows Backup on a GUID Partition Table (GPT) formatted disk.
7. Addressed issue that prevents intermittent User Account Control (UAC) consent failures if the “Require trusted path for credential entry” group policy is enabled.
8. Addressed issue that causes devices to lose connection to their virtual private network (VPN) a few seconds after connecting.
9. Addressed issue that causes a COM port to become unavailable after it is repeatedly opened and closed.
10. Removed the Copy Protection option when ripping CDs in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format from Windows Media Player.
11. Addressed issue with incorrect character mapping between the 932 code page (Japanese Shift-JIS) and Unicode.
12. Addressed issue (after installing KB3161606) where running data deduplication on a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) on Windows Server 2012 R2 based Hyper-V cluster might impact live migration where resource hosting subsystem (RHS) may deadlock and become unresponsive with an 0x9E Stop error.
13. Updated Access Point Name (APN) database entries for several Mobile Operators (including Videotron and Vodafone).
14. Addressed issue that can cause Windows Gateway to remain disconnected instead of failing over when a failure occurs.”

You can install the KB3185279 update via Windows Update, or download it from the Microsoft Update Catalog or the Microsoft Download Center.

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