Windows 7 and Vista update causes crashes and bluescreens

The update from last Tuesday (MS13-063) for Windows 7 and Vista has caused some computers to freeze or crash. Now, the update has been retracted and Microsoft is asking its users to contact them if they are affected.

Last Tuesday, commonly referred to as Patch Tuesday, Microsoft issued a set of patches for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. However, one particular update known as MS13-063 seems to be causing troubles for some users, resulting in crashes, bluescreen of death and freezes of the system.

Reports of this problem started to come in shortly after the update was released, but Microsoft only acknowledged the problem and did not take any actions until yesterday when the patch was retracted. 

So far, information about the source of the error is scarce, and it appears that mostly users running the free antivirus software Avast! Antivirus or the games Final Fantasy, Defiance and Rift are affected. In order to better isolate and fix the source of error, Microsoft has therefore asked for users who are affected by the error to contact them.

One particularly unsettling theory that is floating around is that the errors induced by the MS13-063 update is caused by undiscovered malware rootkits. Hopefully this is not the case and that Microsoft will soon be able to fix the problems.