Microsoft's MS13-057 Update Breaks Down Video Rendering on Windows XP, 7

Microsoft rolled out a total of seven different security bulletins on Patch Tuesday, six of which have been flagged as critical for all Windows versions on the market.

It turns out that one of the delivered bulletins is actually doing more harm than good. Users are complaining that MS13-057, installed as KB 2803821 on Windows 7 and as KB 2834904 on Windows XP, is breaking down video rendering on a number of machines.

Microsoft explained in a security advisory that this particular patch was aimed at “Windows Media Format Runtime 9 and 9.5 (wmvdmod.dll), and at Windows Media Player 11 and 12,” but Adobe users complain that half of their videos turn black in Premiere Pro CS6 after deploying the updates.

“For some reason, the problem is only occurring when I use files larger than 1GB. When I switch to a lower quality video file that is 160MB, for example, I don't have the problem of missing the upper half of the video. I also tried exporting to see if the problem gets corrected during the export process but it also comes out missing the upper half of the video,” one user described the problem.

Microsoft is yet to comment on the issue, but another Adobe user claims to have found the cause of the issue. The MS13-0 57 bulletin is apparently messing up video decoding on a number of machines, so the only way to deal with the problem is to remove the update until Microsoft rolls out a fix.

“We have narrowed it down to windows updates under MS bulliten MS13-057. Specifically, on XP kb2834904 and on windows 7 kb2803821,” another user detailed the problem.

“For us, it occurs when decoding WMV9 files. Not all uses of WMV decoding are affected, but I confirmed that when connecting the WMV decode DLL to a sample grabber for RGB32 video, the frames arrive black on top, so that points directly to decoding internals of the WMV Decode dll. You can uninstall these windows updates to resolve your problem.”

If you wish to uninstall the patch, simply go to “Add/Remove Programs” in Control Panel, click on the “View installed updates” link in the left sidebar, search for KB 2803821 on Windows 7 and KB 2834904 on Windows XP, and then hit the remove button.