CAUTION - Problems with Windows Updates

[[JiF]zougathefist]

You amy or may not have recently seen the press about a 17 year old vulnerability to windows, specifically related to IE 6 or lower.
MS recently released a patch to *ahem* 'Fix' this issue.
I downloaded and installed said patch on Saturday and my Laptop has been deader than an dead dodo at a dodo day of rememberance ever since
I keep getting the BSoD and ridiculous error messages about corrupt sections of my HDD or Unmountable_boot_volumes, or incorrectly installed drivers etc....
So my landlord is a bit of a whizz at the 'ole technology thing and he had a look. we managed to get the comp to boot from the original WinXP installation disk (5 yrs on and it finally came in useful!!) then tried to repair the 'corrupt' section or to reload the data into a different section of the HDD (at one point it wanted mne to format the HD as it could not read it - can you imagine losing 5 yrs worth of photos, bookmarks, Pot luck Server data [2 yrs worth] and all the other stuff you won't miss till its gone)
But despite my best efforts I was unable to get the thing to boot normally. Finally it worked and I got it booting from the HD, then I installed the updates that windon't was suggesting and guess what...? right back to the BsoD - Grr!!

I might also point out that this was last night and I started at 8pm and was still trying at 1am - boy was I unhappy.

So anyway I got totally fed up and just reinstalled XP over the existing version (Setup will complete in approx 37mins - This message was on the screen for 23 minutes... How does that work?) When I got up this morning it was all done and the comp was shut down. I haven't retried it since but today at work I found this
ITWorld Article

and it links to this on the
MSForums

So my advice is DO NOT install the latest updates from MS for Windows unless you have read these articles and are prepared for the problem. Personally I will wait till I hear it has been fixed by MS before doing anything.

My second piece of totally unwarranted advice is BACK UP YOUR DATA, then BACK IT UP AGAIN. I was having cold sweats about the stuff i had lost - I have 90% of my photos on external HD and DVD/CD but its all the notepad files (like every player I have warned/kicked/banned) and the word documents and especially the bookmarks to those obscure places you find on the web that you will NEVER find again.

Anyway I just wanted to get that off my chest, I know I could have just posted the links but I'm thinking of the peanuts and there is the fact that I am avoiding doing any work cos I wanna go home and all this typing makes me look really busy.

5.1 for that sentence ^
0.4 for that one^

hmm this could go on and on...

[[JiF]Brick]

Good info and great backup advice Z, thanks.

Hopefully your word and .txt files were in your "My Documents" directory, which will not get touched during a re-install (over the existing version )

Being that your XP disk is 5 years old, you will have a lot of updates to run.
Make sure you do this before you start surfing the net.

That is a good reason to "slipsteam" a new CD with at least XP SP3 on it:
http://lifehacker.com/386526/slipstream ... llation-cd

[[JiF]Trogdor]

but its all the notepad files (like every player I have warned/kicked/banned)

Whew! Thank god that stuff is gone.... er, I mean ohhh no, Z, that sucks.

....Zouga is mad with power

[[JiF]zougathefist]

I couldn't decide on LOL or Mwahahahahaaa!