Do I need these Windows Updates?

[JorgeA]

Hello,

Microsoft pushed a number of updates for my Vista and Windows 7 machines, that I want to ask about.

These updates are for the ".NET Framework" and "Visual Studio C++" or something like that.

I didn't even know what Visual Studio was before this, had to look it up. I'm not a programmer or developer. Why am I receiving these updates? Nothing for Visual Studio comes up on my PC when I do a Search.

I accepted seven (!) updates relating to .NET Framework for my Vista machine, and now it's running palpably slower than before. (Although, admittedly, the culprit could be any of the other multiple updates MS sent out yesterday. Any insights on this?) The counter on my distributed computing project shows that productivity has decreased about 4-6 percent since yesterday, even after multiple reboots. The Win7 PC has some of the same updates, plus this Visual Studio thing, but I'm holding off on these 'til I hear from you.

The Wikipedia and Microsoft pages on the .NET Framework leave me scratching my head as to what exactly it's supposed to be, what it's for, and why I might want to use it.

So I guess the bottom line is -- do I need these updates, and can I safely disable this .NET Framework thing on my Vista computer, or safely roll back those updates? Are they just sitting there taking up disk space and slowing down my computers?

Thanks for any information you might provide.

--JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

the Visual C++ Runtimes are needed to run application which are developed with Visual C++. If you remove them you are no longer able to run those appreciations.

The PC runs a bit slower, because the mscorsvw.exe must compile the .Net DLLs into native code to speedup .net applications. After this is done, the PC is fast again

[JorgeA]

Thanks for filling me in on this, Andre.

Does that compiling take place right away, once, and then it's done for all programs? Or is it something that occurs again each time (the first time) that a new application that uses the .NET DLLs gets loaded? My Vista PC seems to have gone back to normal more or less, but my two other modern computers are still running slower than before yesterday. (FWIW, I don't use those other two computers much, except for the DC application.)

--JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

the optimization is one done once after you install updates for the .net framework. You can manually start that optimization by opening a command prompt with adminrights and go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727 and C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 and run ngen update.

[JorgeA]

the optimization is one done once after you install updates for the .net framework. You can manually start that optimization by opening a command prompt with adminrights and go to C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727 and C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 and run ngen update.

Ah, very good to know, thank you!

--JorgeA