Microsoft, the owner of the Windows operating system, provides fixes and patches for bugs and security holes for most of their Windows operating system products. You can download them from the Microsoft TechNet or you can go to Windows Update and search for new updates. It's pretty cool, too. All you do is have it check your system and it will find patches and updates your computer needs. Microsoft has done a really fine job getting this to work with all versions of Windows, even older ones like Windows NT and Windows 98. It works great in Windows XP.
Microsoft has even updated it lately so that it does a better job now and makes fewer mistakes. Let's try it. I am sitting in my front room with my laptop computer running Windows XP Professional. I just got onto the Windows Update page and found that I needed over six updates and two drivers. I have opted to download them. Since I am on a laptop with a wireless connection, it is going to take some time. This is the first screen I get:
After I choose to download the patches, I am asked to confirm and accept what Microsoft wants to do. I must accept this in order to get the updates.
Now it is downloading.
After it is done, I must restart the computer in order for the updates to install themselves. I noticed that within the process, it found two drivers that were updated during this process. Well, a problem has developed. I lost my modem— now it doesn't have a current driver. So I chose to go to the Toshiba Website and download the newer driver. I did this and it still does not work. I even rebooted the machine and it still does not work. Based on this, I am not sure Microsoft has fixed the Windows Update site as well as the trade rags said they had. I must "rollback" the current driver.
In Windows XP, you can rollback to a driver to the last installed version. Cool! However, in this situation, the rollback does not work because the modem was lost and there are no drivers for it. The driver that Windows Update put on there was a problem. The only way to fix this is to rollback the current system registry to a version that worked before the Windows Update action. That is another beauty of Windows XP. It allows you to restore the system to a previous date or hour. So I did this system restore back to just before I did the Windows Update.
Now I see that all the updates I downloaded need to be updated again. But that's okay. I'll do that to fix this driver problem I now have. It seems that Microsoft has some research to do.
I've now updated the laptop with security patches, Microsoft.Net Framework, and the Microsoft Jet 4.0 Service Pack 6.0 updates. All this was a little academic with all I had to do. All in all, I still like Microsoft's Windows Update and I just have to watch which drivers I download. I carefully read everything now - exactly what it does and how it affects my computers. I recommend you do the same.
