Ray from Ft. Worth Texas writes:
I have replaced the hard drive on an older XP machine and have re-installed XP Pro and SP1, SP2 and SP3. After the installation there was still about 150 updates that MS auto updater says need to be installed. Are all of these necessary? How can I determine which ones to download and install?
Answer:
Windows Updates are numerous especially if you have to reinstall your operating system. The easiest way to pick and choose which updates to install is to know what the categories microsoft groups updates in to.
Critical Updates: These are updates absolutely vital to resolve known exploits actively being used or widespread errors. It is absolutely vital you install any of these as soon as they appear.
High Priority: High priority updates are updates for bugs, possible exploits and other important updates. These should be installed unless you expressly were told not to update a certain update.
Optional: These updates are two separate sections: Software, Optional and Hardware, Optional. This type of update may have performance improvements or minor bug fixes and should only be installed if your experiencing the bugs listed in the update notes or if you need an updated feature offered.
Updates from Microsoft will have an article number which begins with KB then a series of numbers such as KB2310138. You can go to Microsoft’s site at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/XXXXXXX replace the X’s with the KB article number such as http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2310138
-Tim
Tags: windows 7 update, Windows 8 update, windows update, windows updates, windows xp update
Great tips. Thanks
With fast machines, most of us couldn’t care less, but those who live with outdated dial-up and similar limited networks get hurt timewise nearly every day.
Thanks for clearing up some of the confusion.
Some updates will not be installed until a previous one is …… therefore keep running update again until all are done.
SP-3 PRESENTED A HUGE BURDEN ON OLDER SYSTEMS AND UPDATES FLOG THE SYSTEM TO THE POINT OF STALL, CRASH, AND TOTAL LOCK UP, AS OLDER HARD WARE BECOMES THE ISSUE. PC BASED OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE A JOKE AND CURSE,,THAT’S WHY MAC IS INCREASING IN PRICE EVERY YEAR EVEN WITH LAGGING SALES , BECAUSE THESE ISSUES ARE NOT ENCOUNTERED. WHEN MICRO SOFT DROPPED SUPPORT FOR XP IT SIGNALED THE END OF “IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT PROTOCOL”. THEY GAVE IS VISTA..A NITEMARE AND FOLLOWED WITH IE 7 AND 8 NOW 9 THAT REQUIRES SP3 TO BE FUNCTIONING FOR PERFORMANCE WITH NEW SYSTEMS AND FIBER OPTIC HOOK UP.FIOS AND COX ARE SO FAST THAT ANY SYSTEM THAT IS DATED 2YRS OR MORE MAY NOT DELIVER THE PERFORMANCE THAT IS ADVERTISED BY VERIZON OR COX! HARD WARE BECOMES THE MAJOR ISSUE WITH AGE, MAKING THE JUMP FROM DSL ALMOST USELESS IN TERMS OF EVEN MARGINAL IMPROVEMENTS.
Wonderful tip – thank you!