Support for Windows 2003 Server

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Microsoft will be transitioning once again in July of this year. To be more specific, they will be transitioning on July 14, 2015. This transition will mean the official end of all support for Microsoft Windows 2003 Servers. For some, this may not seem like a real issue. Maybe you're thinking that, with everything still running smoothly, there’s absolutely no need to update the system. That may be partially true, but something else is also true. End of support means that there will be no more updates developed or released. This can also create compliance issues with the current standards and regulations. Also, with no updates, this means less protection from threats regardless of whether or not the server is physical or virtual. 

At this point, we urge you to start either making a place in the budget for a server upgrade or to simply start the process for upgrading from Windows 2003 to Windows 2012. Delaying this process will inevitably create more issues. 

Patch Problems?

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Microsoft recently released an update (KB3013455 (MS15-010)) that was meant to resolve some security issues. Specifically a vulnerability in Micosoft Windows that "could allow remote code execution if an attacker convinces a user to open a specially crafted document or visit an untrusted website that contains embedded TrueType fonts” (Microsoft).

The update had a negative side effect, which was distorting fonts. The easiest way to fix this was to simply uninstall the update. As of now, Microsoft has released a patch for the original update that should fix the issue.

From Support.Microsoft.com:

Known issues with this security update

After you install security update 3013455, you may notice some decrease in text quality in certain scenarios. The problem occurs only on systems that are running one of the following operating systems:

  • Windows Vista SP2
  • Windows Server 2008 SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 SP2 

To resolve this issue, install update 3037639. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

        3037639 Fix for text quality degradation after security update 3013455 (MS15-010) is installed

For now, we recommend installing the most recent patch, which seems to be fixing the issue.