Monday, December 14, 2015

December 8, 2015, update for Outlook 2010 causes Outlook to start in safe mode

I noticed several people reporting weird issues with their Outlook 2010 clients. For instance the loss of signature and other settings. The cause seems to be installation of update KB3114409. This update adds a new feature:

Adds administrative support to prevent Outlook 2010 from booting into safe mode. Administrators set this function in some scenarios when they have add-ins that must be enabled.
Admins can use a registry key or GPO to prevent the users from starting Outlook in safe mode. The issue is, without those controls Outlook now starts in safe mode by default.

The fix is relatively easy, simply uninstall update KB3114409. Alternatively admins can use the aforementioned registry key to control Outlooks behavior. Some smart people on Reddit figured out the correct entries for both x86 and x64 systems: KB3114409 breaking Office 2010, forcing it to start in Safe Mode, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen.

Microsoft pulled the update so I expect no new occurrences. Anyway, this is why we roll-out patches to a small test group before rolling them out to the entire enterprise, don't we?

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