Microsoft blocks some third party drivers due to improperly formatted catalog files

Microsoft says, incorrectly formatted third party drivers will be blocked for install on Windows 10 and Windows servers after the deployment of the cumulative updates of this month.

“When installing a third-party driver, you might receive the error, ‘Windows can’t verify the publisher of this driver software’,” Microsoft says.

“You might also see the error, ‘No signature was present in the subject’ when attempting to view the signature properties using Windows Explorer.”

As Microsoft explains, this issue is caused due to improperly formatted driver catalog files. So, the company decides it to it required for the Windows to have valid DER-encoded PKCS#7 content and correctly embedded in catalog files, starting with the October 2020 updates.

“Catalogs files must be signed per section 11.6 of describing DER-encoding for SET OF members in X.690,” Microsoft adds.

Users, who are encountering the issues when downloading/ installing a third party driver, are asked to contact the driver’s vendor or device manufacturer for an updated and correctly signed driver.

Recently addressed known issues

Microsoft said to their customers at the beginning of this month about the issue with the KB4577062 Windows 10 1903 and 1909 where HTTP Internet access f or LOCAL SYSTEM accounts is blocked using a Firewall.

For the workaround, the company suggested the customers to re-enable HTTP access to the Internet to the Windows 10 setup Dynamic update.

 Internet connectivity and Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) issues with the release of KB4577063 non-security preview cumulative update for Windows 10 2004 has been fixed.

Also, the company released SQL Server 2019 CUB with a fix for CU7 reliability issue affecting customers who used the database snapshot feature.