Number 244 - September 2003

Microsoft Patches & Fixes & Troubles
by Jean Wilcox, The Suncoast Beeper, St. Petersburg, FL
There have been a lot of Microsoft patches and fixes these last few months, and a number of them were flakey, iffy,.even downright bad for some users. For most people, most of the time, in most cases, every patch worked perfectly. For many people, one or two of them caused problems ranging from minor glitches to major, major slowdowns in operation of the computer. I have read some real horror stories. Still, the vast majority of people have no problems.    Problems, however, do arise from time to time. You should know that these patches, fixes, and service packs can be removed just like anything else. Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and there they are. Or at least there they are if you are using XP. I'll be honest with you; I can't remember whether or not they are listed there in earlier Windows versions. (Why don't you go look at your own Control Panel, now, while it's on your mind.) They will be listed last, as everything in there has been alphabetized and these all start with "Windows XP Hot Fix" something or other. Here are some examples of the things I find when I look in there:    Windows XP Service Pack 1    Windows XP HotFix Package (see Q328145 for more information)    Windows XP HotFix SP2 (see Q329834 for more information.)    Windows XP HotFix SP2 Q815021    Windows XP HotFix SP2 Q814033    I have dozens of them. SP2 of course refers to Service Pack 2 for XP .And the Q numbers refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base article number. Should you ever want to read one you see mentioned somewhere, it's generally easier to go to Google and plug the Q number in the space provided and let them run it down for you. Or you can do it the hard way and go to Microsoft, Knowledge Base, and hunt it down yourself. But Google works -and works fast.    I happen to be familiar with the way to remove these things because one of the fixes messed me up to a fare-thee-well. I don't remember its number, but it doesn't matter. Different patches hit different people in different places. Suffice it to say that my Internet Explorer became	totallyundependable - on a random basis. Sometimes it worked properly, sometimes it didn't. I couldn't find anything wrong with it so I didn't know how to repair it. And I never knew when the difficulties were coming. Some time later I read that fix number whatever was causing trouble for many people and suggested that anyone having unexplained problems might be well advised to un-install it and see if that helped. It did, and I learned a valuable lesson that day.    The reason all this is on my mind at the moment is that I just received my daily ElementK Journal newsletter and saw this:    "REBOOT ONLY ONCE AFTER DOWNLOADING MULTIPLE UPDATES AND PATCHES."    "If you download an operating system or application update patch, or add-in, often you're required to reboot your computer before the insWlation can be completed. But if you're installing several updates, patches, or add-ins, don't be afraid to click No when you're prompted to reboot. When all of the day's changes have been made to your system, restart your computer as you normally would and all of the necessary updates will be made to your system simultaneously." No, no, no!    May I humbly suggest you only install one patch at a time, with an absolute maximum of one a day. If you have more, save them somewhere on your hard drive and install them later, one at a time, maybe a couple of days later, after you have a chance to see what the first one did for you, or to you, as the case may be! If you install a handbasketfull of these things and everything goes to pot on your computer, how do you know which one caused the trouble? You don't. Read carefully, and use your common sense. TOGGLE Editor's Note:    Jean is absolutely right! Any Test and Development Engineer knows (often from bitter experience) that you make only one change at a time to a system undert test.
Number 244 - September 2003