Confirmed: Windows 10 update KB 4013429 breaks Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Reports have surfaced of a bug in this month’s patches from Microsoft. According to a series of anonymous posts on the AskWoody Lounge and additional reports on the Microsoft Dynamics Community forum, the recently released Internet Explorer 11.0.40 is causing rendering problems with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, even with the latest Update Rollup 18 installed.
So far the only workaround involves using a different browser (impossible in many shops), dropping CRM 2011 back to IE7 compatibility mode (both speed and compatibility issues), or rolling back the bad patches. Alternatively you could upgrade to CRM 2016, but that’s taking a sledge-hammer-to-an-ant approach.
User Digitalog on the Dynamics forum puts it this way:
Users are starting to have a issue this morning after an IE update was released yesterday.
When opening activities in CRM or some entities there is a blue bar across the screen where the records should be showing up.
Important to note that records are there but just not displaying correctly after this update. Users without the update are showing these records, no problem.
An anonymous poster on AskWoody says:
Views to see related records from contacts, accounts etc are now moved half way down the page and contain no data and multi-line text boxes are now all single line with a scroll bar.
It appears that all of these patches throw Dynamics CRM 2011 into a tizzy:
- KB 4013429 – this month’s Win10 1607 cumulative update that brings the build number up to 14393.953
- KB 4012215 – this month’s Monthly Rollup (“Security Monthly Quality Rollup”) for Win7 and Server 2008 R2
- KB 4012216 – this month’s Monthly Rollup for Win 8.1 and Server 2012 R2
I have not heard similar complaints about KB 4013198, which is this month’s Win10 1511 cumulative update, or KB 4012606, this month’s Win10 1507 update. I also haven’t heard similar complaints for KB 4012204, which is this month’s cumulative Internet Explorer patch. Given the nature of the problem, I would test each of those very thoroughly before deploying them in a CRM 2011 shop.
Admins (and individuals) dealing with the problem are acutely aware of the absence of February patches. If they roll back the cumulative updates for March, the last patches appeared in January.
The situation once again demonstrates the problem with bunched patches. Every Win10 PC running CRM 2011 is faced with a dilemma: Do you install the latest security patches and break CRM, or do you roll back to a security posture that is, at best, two months old? There’s no middle ground.
Of course, folks who roll back KB 4013429 need to be aware of the fact that Windows 10 will reinstall it, the next time Windows Update comes up for air. A scrubbing with wushowhide would be necessary for any PC not connected to an update server.
There’s another skeleton in the bunched update closet. How does Microsoft fix this particular problem? The company may be working on a new rollup for CRM that dodges the bugs in Internet Explorer. As long as the IE bug only manifests itself in CRM 2011, the problem’s relatively easy to contain. But if we start seeing other programs that break with IE 10.0.40, there’s no easy way to sweep this under the rug.
Patching IE as part of an ad-hoc cumulative update or a one-off monthly rollup breaks Microsoft’s Windows-as-a-Service model. I doubt that CRM 2011 customers want to wait a month for Microsoft to get its IE act together.
The ball’s back in your court, Microsoft.
Discussion continues on the AskWoody Lounge.