Microsoft will start 2022 with a flashback of Y2K error. Computer Bleeping report Companies have rescue Temporary fix for a bug that crashes email delivery to on-premises Exchange 2016 and 2019 servers on New Year’s Day. As users discovered, Exchange was trying to store version date checks for its virus scanner in a 32-bit integer variable – a big problem when any date from 1 January 2022 and beyond are all too big. Any new checks cause the malware engine to crash and get the email stuck in the queue.
The emergency fix uses a PowerShell script to suspend two services, replace the older anti-virus engine files with newer ones that use the new sequence of numbers, and restart operations. The fix requires manual input and can take a long time to implement for larger companies, but an automated solution is under development.
This will not affect other Exchange clients. Timing is also ‘ideal’ as holiday weekends can limit demand for email. Even so, the company’s IT managers probably don’t want to start patching servers in 2022, and it’s not clear why Microsoft didn’t anticipate a date issue with software released just a few years ago. before. Whatever the reason, this is a clear lesson in predicting date errors.
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