"Help and Support" patches.

[Nemosta]

I don't recall much, but I do remember an issue quite a long time ago regarding Service Pack 1 for Windows XP and some vulnerability, allowing someone to delete any directory on the system.

I've seen a lot of patches and hot-fixes in Help and Support, and have decided not to download them because people say they cause more problems than they solve. I agree with this, since my laptop went to a black screen when been awaken from Hibernation or Standby shortly after a patch was downloaded.

Yet I'm concerned if I'm keeping my computer from problems or simply allowing it to be a more unsecure operating system, and if someone could clear this up for me I thank you in advance.

-Nemosta

[MSNwar]

I understand where you are coming from and agree with you to a point. Some of the updates did more harm than good, but they are few and far between. We sort of have to look at Microsoft's core update theology. They provide the updates/patches with one caveat. That is the target PC is loaded with Microsoft software excluding 3rd party software. Software that has modified the registry settings or changed the role of the operating system is usually at the root of the reason why a PC does not accept the update. Than again some of the updates were just miserable failures regardless of 3rd party software.

I ran WinXP on one of my home PCs never connected to the internet without any updates till this year. Very few applications from other developers are installed on the machine. It runs flawlessly. Another machine ran WinXP without any updates till SP1. It has a mired selection of software from other developers and a slew of beta programs on it. Never a BSOD on either machine. Matter of fact I have not experienced a BSOD on WinXP but once and it was of my own design. I pushed it too far on purpose to see how much it could take.

Safe? Yes and no. I wait till an update has been in the wild for at least a month before I apply it and only after I am confident that it is safe. Thats just me. The recent patches that M$ released that fix the problem with hackers exploiting a PC are probably necessary for all of us. Are they really? My PCs that have my financial data, credit card numbers, etc. are not connected to the internet. The only thing a hacker could make use of on my PCs connected to the internet are DDOS and the like. Unless of course they consider a few family photos something of interest. Safe computing in this day and age is easy to exercise.

[vcant]

i download the patches as soon as they available, and never has any problems with any of them,

but may be im just lucky, there even was an article about the patches recently, you can find if in the news archive on MSFN, that sais exactly what you said - some of the patches cause more trouble than they solve, they advised to wait to SPs without appliing the patches...

i totally agree with MSNwar on the mater, that if the mashine is not packed with 3rd party software, it will perform great, nothing runs better on windows than other Microsoft software, my guess is that the tweaks probably cause the most trouble...

i would advise selective update, by that i mean that you probably can skeep the patches that say something like 'recommended update, solves this and this problem...' but you probably should download the ones that say 'this voulnerability will allow the attacket to gain control of your computer...'

anyway im not a hacker and i cannot say how voulnerable the computer is without the updates like this...