Microsoft's January 2019 Patch Tuesday fixes 51 security flaws

Microsoft also plans to 'reserve' 7GB of users' disk space to facilitate future updates

Microsoft's January 2019 Patch Tuesday has pushed out 51 fixes for security flaws across Windows, Exchange Server, Hyper-V and other Microsoft packages

One major security flaw in the Windows Jet Database Engine, which can be found in every modern version of the Windows operating systems and affects how objects are handled in memory, has been fixed. That flaw has been known about since September.

Critical flaws in Microsoft's Exchange Server and Hyper-V were also fixed, along with remote execution bugs in scripting engines for the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. In addition, an elevated execution privilege vulnerability in Skype for Android has also been fixed.

The full release notes have been published by Microsoft here.

However, news has also filtered out of plns by Microsoft to reserve 7GB of individuals' PC storage to better facilitate its major updates.

Having gone through what can only be described as quite a mess when it came to last year's October Update, Microsoft's storage segregation will aim to ensure that updates install more reliably.

The reserved space will be used for cached and temporary files so that it's not sitting there sullen and unused. But when an update wings its way out of Redmond's servers, the files will be purged to make way for the patch.

"Starting with the next major update we're making a few changes to how Windows 10 manages disk space. Through reserved storage, some disk space will be set aside to be used by updates, apps, temporary files, and system caches,' said Microsoft program manager Jesse Rajwan.

He continued: "Our goal is to improve the day-to-day function of your PC by ensuring critical OS functions always have access to disk space. Without reserved storage, if a user almost fills up her or his storage, several Windows and application scenarios become unreliable.

"Windows and application scenarios may not work as expected if they need free space to function. With reserved storage, updates, apps, temporary files, and caches are less likely to take away from valuable free space and should continue to operate as expected."

Rajwan added that the 7GB of reserved storage might grow in the future: "We may adjust the size of reserved storage in the future based on diagnostic data or feedback."

The move could affect users with limited storage space - such as the base level Surface devices, which come with just 64GB of built-in storage.