July 2013 Update for Lync 2013 Icon Weirdness

So, along with probably a bazillion other people, I installed the July 2013 client update for Lync 2013 (CU2) to see all the new awesomeness around Q & A, picture cut'n'paste and other assorted goodies as shown on several other blogs like Richard Brynteson from MasteringLync.com.

While the new features worked great, I couldn't help but notice that the new icons were either completely missing or showed incorrectly, as in the below screenshots:

Note the missing icon for "Q & A"

Note the weird icon on the right where the meeting icon should be

After removing and reinstalling both the Lync 2013 client update and even Lync 2013 itself, the situation never changed. After posting a question in the Lync MVP mailing list, Dave Howe from MS came back asking about the version numbers of MSO.DLL and MSORES.DLL.  Apparently, those DLLs contain the Lync 2013 icons, so if they're the incorrect version, then you'll see issues.  In my Office 2013 x32 installations, those DLLs were found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE15.

Keeping an eye on those files, I reinstalled the Lync 2013 CU2 update once again.  However, they never changed from their default value.  Going on what I heard from others, I went to Windows Update to install the latest updates for Office 2013.  Several were found on my first pass.  I noticed that MSORES.DLL seemed to be updated by KB2817489 to 15.0.4517.1003 , but MSO.DLL was untouched.  With that update, the wonky icon showed up correctly, but the icons for "Q & A" and "No Meeting IM" were still missing.

Re-running Windows Update again installed a few more updates, notably KB2817491. This updated MSO.DLL to 15.0.4517.1005, at which point all the icons showed up normally.

If you read the description for KB2817489, it says the update should fix the Q & A and ME icons (whatever that is). The description page for KB2817491 is currently not available, so I can't tell what it does. The patch is apparently for Office 2013 x64, but I was running x32, and it updated the x32 version of MSO.DLL.  There may be some documentation fixing to do.

So, if you install Lync 2013 CU2, make sure you run Windows Update not just once, but TWICE to ensure you get all the updates necessary for Lync 2013 to work properly.

What did I learn from all this? MSORES.DLL stores the icons for the main Lync page, while MSO.DLL stores other icons.  Also, not all Lync file updates come in one nice package, as you would hope.

On a final note, I have to say that I am not a fan of this process.  I understand that Lync 2013 is now part of Office 2013, but is it too much to ask that if an update is put out for Lync 2013, that update should include ALL the required DLL updates?  I shouldn't have to install multiple seemingly unrelated updates just to get a fully functional Lync 2013 client.  This took up a good half a day of troubleshooting that would have been better spent doing other things.

By the way, I want to give special thanks to Dave Howe from Microsoft. If it weren't for him asking about MSO/MSORES, it would have taken a lot longer to figure out the solution.