April 2017 Monthly Rollup Breaks VB6 App

I maintain a client-server database app written in VB6 that uses ADO and COM+/DCOM. After installing the “April, 2017 Security Monthly Quality Rollup,” the VB6 app crashes in msado15.dll and ntdll.dll when trying to write to to the database. Uninstalling the update restores full write functionality. This is verified on Windows 7 x86 and Windows 8.1 x64. The issue is also present in Windows 10 x64 but I’m not testing that further.

Let me know if you encounter a similar issue and if you find a solution!

Note that reading from the database seems unaffected; it is only writing that causes problems. In this application, only database requests that write to the database are wrapped in a COM+ transaction (“Requires New” in the component).

Windows 7

Testing on this 32-bit virtual machine, the following updates cause problems:

April, 2017 Security Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 7 (KB4015549)

Errors in the Application event log:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          4/12/2017 11:10:22 AM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Description:
Faulting application name: [CustomClient.exe], version: 1.4.0.0, time stamp: 0x530fd205
Faulting module name: msado15.dll, version: 6.1.7601.23715, time stamp: 0x58c06587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000c5b02
Faulting process id: 0x1790
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2b3b7e89343f2
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\ado\msado15.dll
Report Id: 4b1ad824-1fab-11e7-b2f4-0003ff3c9549

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          4/12/2017 11:10:27 AM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Description:
Faulting application name: [CustomClient.exe], version: 1.4.0.0, time stamp: 0x530fd205
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.23714, time stamp: 0x58bf8774
Exception code: 0xc0000029
Fault offset: 0x000902f6
Faulting process id: 0x1790
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2b3b7e89343f2
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 4df2cb42-1fab-11e7-b2f4-0003ff3c9549

Windows 8.1

This 64-bit virtual machine is the development environment running Visual Basic 6. The following updates cause problems:

April, 2017 Security Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 8.1 for x64-based Systems (KB4015550)

Even when run in the VB6 IDE, when trying to write data, rather than trap the error at a specific line number, the entire vb6.exe IDE crashed. The following errors are found in the Application event log:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-MSDTC Client
Date:          4/12/2017 10:32:47 AM
Event ID:      4156
Task Category: CM
Level:         Error
Description:
String message: RPC raised an exception with a return code RPC_S_INVALIDA_ARG..

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Complus
Date:          4/12/2017 10:33:15 AM
Event ID:      4434
Task Category: Security
Level:         Warning
Description:
A method call to an object in a COM+ application was rejected because the caller is not properly authorized to make this call. The COM+ application is configured to use Application and Component level access checks, and enforcement of these checks is currently enabled. The remainder of this message provides information about the component method that the caller attempted to invoke and the identity of the caller.Svc/Lvl/Imp = 10/6/3,  Identity = mydomain\MyUser [See “COM+ Configuration” below.]

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Application Error
Date:          4/12/2017 10:37:59 AM
Event ID:      1000
Task Category: (100)
Level:         Error
Description:
Faulting application name: VB6.EXE, version: 6.0.97.82, time stamp: 0x403acf6c
Faulting module name: msado15.dll, version: 6.3.9600.18622, time stamp: 0x58c05749
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000ed8dd
Faulting process id: 0x1344
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2b3b2e8d95900
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\VB98\VB6.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\System\ado\msado15.dll
Report Id: c4b9983c-1fa6-11e7-8301-00155d266400
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

COM+ Configuration

The message in bold above, from VB6 under Windows 8.1, make it sound like an issue with a COM+ call. It says the failing component method is “Svc/Lvl/Imp = 10/6/3” but I don’t know what that is.

I believe when run from the VB6 IDE, COM works a little differently, but the “real” COM+ server, running on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine, is configured as follows, i.e. to work at the Process level, not the Component level:

Likely Related

Here’s a report of an issue that is likely related to my issue:

FYI: KB4015217 breaks ADODB.Recordset Filter property

Update April 27, 2017

I’ve been hoping that some large enterprise customer would be affected by this issue and get Microsoft to fix and re-release the patch. However, using my PowerShell script to get update details, it looks like KB4015549 (for 32-bit Win7) has not changed since April 11:

 

Update May 9, 2017 – Fixed

Microsoft today released patches to fix the issue introduced last month. For example KB4019264 (for Windows 7), states, “Addressed issue where, after installing security update KB4015549, applications that use msado15.dll stop working.”

With April’s KB4015549 installed on a 32-bit Windows 7 SP1 machine, C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\ado\msado15.dll was at version 6.1.7601.23715. My app was crashing.

With May’s KB4019264 installed, msado15.dll is at version 6.1.7601.23789, modified April 21, 2017 at 8:15:34AM. The app no longer crashes when updating a record.