Somewhere in October Microsoft decided to add a SharePoint update to the Windows Update system. This caused some Sharepoint servers that had enabled Auto Update to stop working and throwing errors all around the place.
Now on most servers we have disabled the following function:
Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows
This should disallow Windows Update to update Office applications like SharePoint, except it didnt do this for the update that Microsoft did sneak into a Windows update!
This resulted in a new Best Practice for our SharePoint servers to not Auto Update the SharePoint servers, we know this could be a possible Security risk, but it also could lead to a non working SharePoint Farm!
Recommedation:
Let Windows only download the updates and manually install them so you can check for hidden updates. You can change this in the Control Panel –> System Security –> Windows Update, and just change the settings there.