PSA: ALT+click (to reset plug-in paramters) broken by Windows Updates

[beggehorn]

Consider this a public service announcement to my fellow Windows brothers and sisters...

I've been trying to track down why ALT+click to reset plug-in parameters to default had become broken on most of my 3p plug-ins. Now, some 3ps choose to implement this function in a different way so this only applies to those plug-ins that support it. Oddly, all Avid distributed plug-ins are immune.

Turns out this issue is being caused by specific Windows Updates. For those of you that have your rigs connected to the Internet and keep up-to-date with Windows Updates, you'll need to uninstall these to restore broken ALT+click functionality:

KB2975719
KB2984006
KB2993651
KB3000061
KB3000850
KB3002885
KB3013455

One problem is that some of these actually will re-install one of the others on the list. If you decide to go "weeding", you have to double check after you re-boot to make sure that none of the others have been re-installed again. The other issue is that some of these won't appear until you have removed a "superseding" update. Just keep double checking the list of installed updates until these are all removed. If you want to make sure they don't get installed accidently with future updates, right-click on each of them and select "hide update" in Windows Update. They can be easily shown and installed at a later date once this gets a permanent fix.

I'm on Windows 8.1 (Update 1) and am not sure if this affects other flavors of Windows (ie: Win 7) so chime in if you can confirm this happens on other versions. Also, this issue seems to affect every version of ProTools 10/11.

I'm also getting in touch with a few of the affected 3ps and hope whatever the real fix is that it comes soon... not sure if it's an Avid issue or within the 3p plug-ins. If anyone has any helpful info, I'll be sure to pass it along!