Microsoft Windows Automatic Updates Broke My Computer
May 16, 2007 Posted by Tara in : Microsoft, Tips , trackback,
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Well, not really. What it did do was cause my machine to hang and prompt a system error that garbled all of the text on my screen. I called my friendly tech support team and they came to the rescue, but I decided to delve a bit deeper into the problem to see what others people’s experiences were.
It turns out that 5 other people at my company had that exact problem, and that was just at my company alone. Think of all of the hundreds of thousands of users out there having the exact same problem. If you are like me, when the Microsoft pop-up prompts me to “run automatic updates,” I just comply, fearing that if I don’t my computer will be vulnerable to all of the nastiness that can affect one’s machine.
However, not all patches that Microsoft sends us are critical to the health of our PCs, and many of them do cause problems for a wide range of users. Unfortunately, since Microsoft owns the universe, we have little other choice than to follow their instructions like lemmings to the slaughter.
One thing we can do is disable the automatic updates and update manually. To do this:
1. Go to your PC’s Control Panel.
2. In classic view, double-click on Automatic Updates and then select “Turn off Automatic Updates.”
3. Set a recurring task for yourself in Outlook (or whatever you use to manage your calender) every two weeks to run updates for yourself.
4. Go to Update.microsoft.com and follow the prompts. Choose “Custom” installation.
This will ensure that you get the updates but will stop your computer from becoming a corrupted mess.
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Comments»
Great Advice. I consider Internet Explorer 7 in it’s entirety to be a bug. When you DO your uptates manually, NEVER pick Express. Pick Custom, and carefully read what they are giving you. If you don’t like the looks of something, Google it, then if it seems bad, Uncheck it then check “Don’t Remind me about this again”. Don’t Let Billy G push you around!
I agree, as long as you remember to run manual updates periodically or to click “custom”, doing it manually will save you trouble in the long run.
HOWEVER, while IE7 is pretty bad, at least it’s more standards complaint than IE5 and 6. After spending several wasted hours of my life tonight trying to get a min-width hack to work correctly on the site, I finally just gave up. If you’re viewing the site in IE6 or below with a screen resolution wider than 1024, you’re getting a bonus border along the right side.
Can’t everybody just used Firefox?….
quote: “If you are like me, when the Microsoft pop-up prompts me to “run automatic updates,†I just comply, fearing that if I don’t my computer will be vulnerable to all of the nastiness that can affect one’s machine.”
Oh my gosh, I wish more people were like you, honestly. I work with college students, and every time one visits me for help with Excel or whatever, I see that little globe or shield sitting in their system tray. “When was the last time you installed your Windows updates?” Usually, the answer is never.
Some updates are crap, but they are missing all the security updates too. Then they complain about how their laptops run poorly. I wonder why?
Think of all of they ickyness they are vulnerable to in that setting as well with all of the crap that they are constantly downloading, I was in school during the free Napster days an I was constantly downloading all day! And I had no idea about Windows updates either.