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Vista Update KB942615 can disable your connection

Thursday December 13, 2007

This morning my computer rebooted because of the monthly Windows Updates. Never mind the fact that I had an open web browser with unsaved work, but when the computer rebooted, the internet connection did not work.

I could connect to my wireless router. I just couldn’t reach the Internet. So I fired up my laptop, and while connected to the same router it had no problems connecting to the Internet. Weird. It didn’t immediately occur to me that it could be the monthly Windows Update, since my laptop got the same updates yesterday, and it could connect.

ipconfig /all showed that I had two default gateways; looking up the same information using Network and Sharing Center there was only one (the correct one).

C:\Users\Vegard>ipconfig /all
[...]
Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:
[...]
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
                                       192.168.1.1
   DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

The 0.0.0.0 default gateway is obviously wrong. It explained why I couldn’t connect to the Internet while I could connect to the router. So I tried to find the culprit.

Using my laptop to look up all the updates relating specifically to Windows installed today from Windows Update, I found only one that was network related, however it was a “Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer” (KB942615), so I didn’t really think it was all that relevant. However, I uninstalled it anyhow.

The computer rebooted, and the Internet connection was back up.

So, if you are experiencing Internet connection problems on a Vista x64 machine (this might also apply to x86) after the updates of December 12th, you should uninstall KB942615.