Comments on: Why You Should Not Choose Microsoft Automatic Update

By: Kikolani

Kikolani — Mon, 25 May 2009 21:50:23 +0000

Developers have problems with Microsoft updates, especially when they work with software built buy smaller businesses instead of Adobe or other Microsoft software. Also, if you have automatic updates installed, you inevitably find yourself in the position of booting up your machine, starting something that you want to finish quickly, and then interrupted by the “restart to install your updates” message every ten minutes. Very frustrating.

~ Kristi

By: Rodney J

Rodney J — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:35:09 +0000

For my entire professional career this has always been the case with Microsoft updates. I used to work with NT4 servers and after the memory leak in the tcp/ip stack was fixed in SP3 I never updated the system further because all my servers were predictably stable. This included the “critical” SP5 that supposedly fixed all M$ “Y2K” problems. I refused to deploy the service pack citing that I didn’t want 3am phone calls about system instability; and my company made me sign an affidavit that my systems would pass all “Y2K” tests after Jan 1, 2000. I just smiled and signed it, and, of course, no “Y2K” problems ensued as the SP5 service pack fixed Y2K problems found mostly in M$ Office products of which I wasn’t using on my servers.

So even to this day when my IT guys want to “fix” stable servers by deploying a “critical” service pack sent by Microsoft, I make them tell me exactly what systems are to be fixed and why the “fix” is necessary. “Because M$ said so” isn’t a good enough reason.

By: Frank J

Frank J — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:59:01 +0000

Robert,

We appreciate the comment and reference to your blog.

By: Robert Kosednar

Robert Kosednar — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:01:32 +0000

At TechnoKOZ we agree totally with this article. Too often we receive calls from customer's who have opted for the latest update, unknowingly get "bulldozed" by Microsoft's great wisdom. Perfect example was SP3, many HP user's were affected by this update, unable to boot. We posted many articles on our blog: http://computerrepairservice.net/blog regarding this issue as well as options to help resolve. Kudos to reminding the masses about this awful situation.